Residents around LEKMA hospital in fear after doctor tests positive for COVID-19
Following reports that a doctor who works at the Ledzokuku Municipal Hospital (LEKMA Hospital) at Teshie in the Greater Accra Region has tested positive for COVID-19, some residents in Teshie have expressed concern over their wellbeing.
They say it is their fear they may come in contact with a nurse or health practitioner within the facility infected with the virus.
Citi News sources say the doctor may have picked up the virus while working with a private facility in assisting the Ghana Aviation Company Limited (GACL) to screen persons arriving in the country and some persons in quarantine.
He is the first frontline medical staff known publicly to have contracted the disease.
Now the hospital, which has served residents well since it started operation, no longer offers the healthcare security to residents.
“At first, I thought the hospital was a safe space to go and have regular checkups but now that doctors themselves are hiding such things from us the residents then it is not safe,” one resident said in a Citi News interview.
“We are all in fear… my mom came home and told us there is one hospital staff who is infected so we should be careful. So we are all in fear now because she sells at the roadside and for me, I am afraid for her,” another resident told Citi News.
The hospital has since mobilised to have the workers who came into contact with the doctor tested for the virus.
One of the tested nurses, who spoke to Citi News, said her test results are yet to arrive.
“We were told that the result would come on Sunday but for the meantime, we should self-quarantine until the results are in.”
But some of the nurses complained that living arrangements made self-quarantining for some of them impossible.
Aside from these concerns, the nurses also questioned the lack of support from the hospital’s management.
“I have not heard from anybody as to whether the result is ready or not. No authority from the hospital has called me to even give me any psychological support,” one of them lamented.
Aside from this, the nurse is not happy that they have to return to work in a day’s time.
“More than 20 people have not been tested at all yet they want us to go back to work on Wednesday. They are reopening the theatre for us to go back and work,” the nurse complained.
Source: Philip Nii Lartey