By Ethel A. Tweh
Grand Kru County Senator Numene T. H. Bartekwa has frowned on hospitals and other medical facilities here for allegedly denying patients access to treatment for lack of beds.
In his communication to the Senate Plenary Tuesday, 24 January 2023, the Senate Chair on Concession and Investment Committee alleged that hospitals and health facilities usually turn down patients at night hours.
He said they do so without receiving and stabilizing the patients. Bartekwa lamented that hospitals can refer patients to other facilities without intervening.
“As soon as the patient comes in the car on emergency, they can just tell them no bed, without receiving the patient,” he said.
Bartekwa asked the Senate to consider adding to the National Health Law of Liberia a provision requiring every Clinic, Health Center, and Referral Hospital to receive all emergency patients brought between 6 pm to 7 am.
Bartekwa urged that they should exert all medical efforts to stabilize the patient and work with the family of the patient the following day in arranging a referral if there is a need.
“No health facility should reject a patient on the claim of no bed unless that facility is already closed. If it causes the patient to be treated in the car that carried him/her, let the Doctors do that to help the patient,” he said.
The Grand Kru County Senator said if the patient hears “no bed,” that alone can break them down and worsen their sickness.
He noted that if a patient goes to Redemption Hospital in New Kru Town, for example, and the hospital said there’s no bed, the distance from Redemption to JFK is very long and the person might die upon arrival.
According to him, every clinic, health center, and referral hospital should have as a requirement, a certain number of reserved camped beds according to their size for the accommodation of emergency patients.
Bartekwa said if these proposals are included and medical institutions begin to adhere to them, the huge number of unnecessary deaths being experienced will be substantially reduced.
Sen. Batequa, increase the national budget on health. The reasons beds are inadequate and overwhelmed with increase in patients are because numerous reports from the
health administrators calling for funding and support is not forthcoming.
I was a victim in 2020 when I was brought
by the flight from Harper to JFK, Monrovia for further treatment after an accident that resulted to a broken right arm. All of the beds were occupied with patients at JFK when I got there and I was asked to sit on a bench to wait until a patient or patients were discharged before I could allow to be admitted. Doctors or nurses are not to be blamed when they announced that lack of beds to admit patients. It tells you that the government is not concious and concern about the plight of patients needs and access to health care service and lack of improvement in the hospitals, clinics, and health centers. It is regrettable.