Pregnant woman dies over malfunctioning lift at Korle Bu maternity block

Patients at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) have expressed frustration and fear at the breakdown of the Maternity Block lift, which has claimed the life of a pregnant woman.

According to a reliable source, the pregnant woman lost her life a few months ago when she was being transferred to the theater for treatment of excessive bleeding.

“Ideally, the woman would have been transferred to the theater on a stretcher but because the lifts are not working, she was carried in a wheelchair, which led to the unfortunate incident,” the source disclosed.

A visit to the hospital by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) saw women in labour as well as nursing mothers, undergoing cesarean sessions, trek the six-storey maternity block staircases for daily care because the lift has failed to work for months.

The Maternity Block lift, installed in 2011, has over the years witnessed occasional breakdowns but for months now it has stopped working completely, causing so much frustration to patients, visitors and the healthcare professionals.

The source disclosed that the lift was the major cause of frustration and danger in their system of work and needed to be changed completely to enhance work and safeguard the life of pregnant women during emergencies.

The maternity block lift has become archaic and needs a new one because it gets fixed and becomes faulty again not long after, according to the source.

Madam Selassie Dorkenoo, a heavily pregnant woman, who was visiting her doctor on the fifth floor, in an interaction with the GNA, could not hide how tired she was, climbing the stairs all the way to the fifth floor.

“I can’t imagine going back the same way I came after my consultation,” she added.

Korle-bu Teaching Hospital, like most public institutions in Ghana, has a poor maintenance culture fed with poor planning.