Ghana needs at least 1000 more respirators – Respiratory therapist

Source: https://www.myjoyonline.com/ | 28 March 2020

A respiratory therapist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine says Ghana needs to invest in getting more ventilators to address the rising concern of the coronavirus.

Jibril Yahaya Luwaa speaking on Joy News’ Newsfile Saturday, said the number of ventilators in the country would not be sufficient to cater to patients with critical conditions in the case of a surge in the pandemic in the country.

He said, “For a country like Ghana we need at least about a 1000 ventilators. I know it’s an expensive piece of equipment, at least one costs between $20-25,000.

“That’s the average price. I know it’s expensive, but it’s a life support machine that we need at this critical moment. Thus government needs to make more effort to acquire these ventilators.”

Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Aboagye says Ghana is procuring new ventilators to ramp up health care services as a looming surge in the Covid-19 is expected.

At the moment, Ghana’s public health sector has about 67 ready ventilators and according to the Director, with ventilators from the private sector, it will amount to about a hundred.

He mentioned that more are on their way into the country, and 20 have already been received in the country.

“We have been preparing and we have been procuring ventilators. What we are also trying to avoid in the initial phase is to limit the number of people who will get into that stage.

“We have improved our ventilators count; we’ve been bringing about a hundred more. I think about twenty has already arrived.

“We’ve taken stock of all our ventilators across the country and we’re bringing in more,” he said.

Some parts of Ghana are expected to go on a partial lockdown starting on Monday at 1:00 pm in an effort to contain and control the spread of the coronavirus.