The Ho Teaching Hospital (HTH) has asked all relatives of patients at the health post to vacate its premises.

This is to prevent the relatives of patients from continuously spending the night on the corridors of the Out Patient Department (OPD) and the walkways at the hospital.

Relatives of patients currently on admission at the hospital have, however, bemoaned the action by the hospital.

According to them, they are sometimes called during the night to buy medication for the relatives, and, so, it is just appropriate to be close to them.

The relatives of the patients also noted that the facility behind the hospital where they were directed to stay was too far from the facility and not neat for habitation.

A woman, whose husband is on admission at the hospital but is resident in the Oti Region, complained to Class 91.3 FM’s Volta regional correspondent Kingsley Attitsogbui: “This evening, I came from the ward. When I came back, I saw everybody packing their things, the securities were there, I also packed my things".

She noted that staying far away from the patient can cause her to lose her patient, especially when they need her to buy drugs and she is not available.

She, therefore, appealed to the hospital authorities to rescind their decision to throw them out.

The Director of Administration at the hospital, George Kofi Tetteh, for his part, said: “It is rather unfortunate that the patient relative didn’t get the position of the hospital.”

He explained that the hospital is meant for treating the patient and not the relative, although in certain instances, the relatives are also needed to support the care that is given to the patient.

According to Mr Tetteh, on Friday, 10 August 2023, the hospital directed the security to drive the relatives away.

“At times, they become a nuisance to the environment. They litter the environment and the whole place becomes untidy,” he said.

“Some of them; we don’t even know their background, you can have some unscrupulous people also come in to steal the wares of the relatives, so, for now, the hospital hasn’t got a place to house these patient relatives,” the hospital administrator revealed.

He further revealed that considering the role that relatives of patients play, they sent proposals to Non-Governmental Organisations and some individual to come to the hospital’s aid to enable them put up a decent place to house them.

He appealed to the public to make use of the visiting hours. 

He indicated that there is a facility behind the hospital where they can stay instead of hovering around the hospital.

He stressed that the visitors will not be allowed to hover around the premises for now and urged people with peculiar problems to contact the hospital’s head of security or the director of administration.

“For now, we don’t allow them to hover around for their own safety because if you are not careful, you’ll leave here and then you go home with another sickness, with another disease,” he noted.

In the interim, he appealed to the relatives of the patients to stay away from the facility, stressing they can also pick up diseases.