Phebe Hospital Acting Administrator, Reverend Victor Padmore has disclosed that the Hospital’s Management will shortly begin charging patients for treatment and services rendered at the hospital.
The disclosure comes as the alleged fight for supremacy between the government and churches intensifies leading to a reported draw down in government’s supports to the hospital.
Phebe Hospital is owned by the Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal Churches, but it receives subsidies from the government and implements government’s policies. According to Rev. Padmore, childbearing mothers and children are usually catered to on a free of charge basis.
But he now says patients, including childbearing mothers and children will begin paying for the services and medication in the coming weeks.
Rev. Padmore explains that the move is part of efforts by the hospital’s management to assist the government to run the hospital, considering the fact that the government is overwhelmed with huge challenges.
Rev. Padmore says there are rumors circulating that the government will shortly withdraw additional two medical doctors from Phebe Hospital.
However, several residents of Bong County are stressing the need need for an understanding to be reached between the government and hospital’s board, as the lives of the ordinary people who cannot afford going to private health facilities will be endangered if the fight for supremacy continues at Phebe Hospital.
The citizens expressing their views on the latest development during a Radio Gbarnga breakfast program say it will be appropriate for the government to keep supporting the Hospital so as to continue its free medication to the ordinary citizens in the county and part adjacent.
“Let those in government understand that it is not about the hospital’s administration, but about the lives of people who cannot afford to go to private hospitals,” one caller says.
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“No matter what happens, I don’t think it will be necessary for the government to close its eyes on the support of the hospital in spite of the current economic challenges,” Alfred J. Tokpa, one of the citizens cautions.
Also speaking, Dennis Flomo, a private health worker in Gbarnga says providing free medication promotes improvements in both health outcomes and the citizens’ perceptions of the quality of their care.
He therefore calls on the government to drop every plan of ‘withdrawing doctors from the hospital’
By Joseph Titus Yekeryan in Bong County–Edited by Winston W. Parley
