“NO BED SYNDROME” – A SLOW ENDEMIC?

Since the end of 2017, the no bed syndrome-related trend of bed use in Ghana has attracted public attention. No bed syndrome has been a problem for as long as anybody can remember, but it didn’t become widely known until it started affecting the nation’s elites and there was a need for new hospitals to be built as well as their expansion.

Early in 2018, the issue of hospitals not having enough beds for new patients, especially in the emergency room, spread like wildfire. The phenomenon which appears to have been around for some time, but dormant, before it was connected to the tragic death of a 70-year-old man who had been denied admittance on multiple occasions. Although the tragedy sparked outrage in Ghanaian society, it appears that no progress has been made toward its resolution, and statistical experience suggests that the crisis is still ongoing.

The 2015 budget pages 25 to 26 indicate that the John Mahama-led administration has placed a significant amount of emphasis on the provision of more bed spaces. In actuality, these initiatives aimed to lower the patient-to-bed ratio and stop rural-urban health-seeking movement. Should it be that the John Mahama administration have predicted the tragedy and applied the prior lesson on bed usage and associated concerns to avoid further repercussions?It is acknowledged that while Mahama’s presidency, the health sector has benefited greatly from improved infrastructure. If he had been given a further four years, we can speculate how the story would have turned out. When taking into account the rate of population expansion in recent years, which may indicate strain on the healthcare facility, the no-bed phenomenon would have had the history of a fairy-tale. The people’s manifesto for 2020 mentions health for all and health policy as a plan, which are important in combating the problem, in sections 7.1 and 7.1.1, respectively.

The administration of the supposedly wisest and most knowledgeable group of individuals who followed the tusker ideology was shown to be nothing more than a bunch of fools by this in all domains of truth. Since the current administration has not even increased the health sector’s contribution to eradicating the problem by a single grain of sand, it is obvious that the former president’s vision for rescuing the no-bed syndrome has remained a pipe dream. The people of Ghana can attest to the fact that they “poured sand in our gari” and that it worked like we had been possessed, leading us to feel that John Mahama was incompetent.

If caution is not used, the nation’s chronic hospital bed shortage will continue to rise and fall like the tide, from the administration of the hospitals to the government. Who is to blame here? Should it happen to our near and dear ones before we realized how terrible it is, or are we going to stick with the old stories? Since the current administration has nothing fresh to offer, I am not looking and have hope in them.

Written By: Etornam Axandrah, 18plus4NDC