THE food and Drugs Board (FDB) has directed health workers, especially medical doctors, to report to the board any negative effects that medical equipment or drugs might have on their patients.
According to the board, that would enable it to take remedial measures to avoid the recurrence of such mishaps on patients, some of whom die from such instances.
Messrs Afesey Ernest and George Sablala, Heads of the Medical Devices Laboratory and Safety Monitoring Unit of the FDB, respectively gave the directive, when they addressed a conference on patient safety and quality health care in Koforidua.
The one-day conference organised by the Ghana Quality Organisation (GQO), in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service, was attended by about 120 medical practitioners and experts drawn from different parts of the country.
The two FDB officials said many patients died as a result of negative effects of counterfeit drugs and medical equipment, some of which were not properly applied or wrong devices.
They stated that currently, there were a lot of drugs and medical equipment that should not be used on patients, and the only way to address the issue was for medical practitioners to identify such drugs and equipment with notification to the FDB to enable it to trace their sources of supply for the necessary action.
“There are a lot of fake drugs in the system which must not be used by human beings as well as medical equipment that are either obsolete or wrongly applied on patients and you as medical doctors owe society a duty by helping to withdraw them from the system,” they stated.
A medical expert and resource person, Dr Cynthia Bannerman, said one in every 300 patients treated at the hospitals suffered permanent injury or death, due to the application of fake drugs or wrongful usage of medical equipment.
She said the sad aspect of the situation was that some of the health workers, especially doctors and nurses, made mistakes in the course of rendering services to patients.
Dr Bannerman stated that such a situation often led to financial loss to the patient and family, and could also lead to unnecessary litigation and death of the patient.
She, therefore, urged doctors and nurses to be bold to notify their superiors of their mistakes for the necessary remedy to forestall recurrence of such mistakes.
Another expert on patient safety and quality health care, Lieutenant Commander (red) Ernest Boateng-Okrah expressed dissatisfaction about the long hours patients had to wait when receiving treatment at the hospitals.
He stressed that the long period of waiting, which constituted wastage, could also be dangerous for patients.
Lt Col. Boateng-Okrah, therefore, called on administrators of health facilities to see how best to address the problem.
A Medical Practitioner, Dr Wilfred Larbi Addo, who deputised for the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Elias Sory, implored doctors to follow the operational guidelines of the medical profession.
He said it was only in that direction that they could assure the safety of patients.
Earlier in a welcoming address, the Project Co-ordinator of the Ghana Quality Organisation (GQO), Mr Anthony K. Ameka, stated that his outfit, which was formed in 2005, aimed at assisting health care professionals and workers to build quality management skills and capabilities to improve patients’ safety and also speed up patient recovery process.
Mr Ameka said in order to achieve those goals, GQO would continue to offer short-term quality programmes for health professionals in such areas as food safety and quality, health quality assurance, quality engineering, management and auditing.
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