The Coalition of Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) in health in the Upper East Region, has donated pull-up banners of the patient`s charter to the Regional and Talensi District Hospitals to help improve health delivery. The Coalition of NGOs is a network of NGOs working on one or all the building blocks of the health system through education, advocacy, monitoring and evaluation. The gesture by the NGOs is to equip patients on their rights and responsibilities for improved health care delivery and build mutual relations between patients and health care givers. In collaboration with the Health Promotion Unit of the Ghana Health service, they also sensitised patients at the two hospitals on their rights and responsibilities. The donation, led by the Rural Initiative for Self-Empowerment (RISE) Ghana formed part of its Gender Rights Empowerment project (G-REP) in partnership with the Star Ghana Foundation and with funding support from the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office. It aimed at strengthening health committees and citizen groups to champion access to quality maternal health in the Talensi and Nabdam Districts. Ms Jaw-Haratu Amadu, Head of programmes, RISE Ghana, noted that key to the recovery of patients was how health service providers received patients and how they talked to them. She said the patient`s charter which detailed their rights and responsibilities was essential to moderating their conduct health service providers and creating a conducive relations between providers and patients for improved health care delivery She added that ‘just as patients have the right to complain, ask questions and seek for alternative care when they deem it necessary, those rights also comes with responsibilities that beholds on them to conduct themselves appropriately and that is why we have taken them through the patient charter to enable them understand their rights and responsibilities’. Mr Patrick Anamoo, the Regional Secretary of the Coalition, while expressing gratitude to RISE Ghana, said the donation was to complement government`s effort in health care delivery at the hospitals and called on other organisations working in the area of health to empower citizens to ensure good health for all. Mr Collins Yin, a health promotion officer at the regional hospital who facilitated the sensitisation, advised the patients to see health care givers as people they could rely on and try to be truthful about what was wrong with them for the right and quality of care to be administered to them. Mr Victor Asangalisah, Nurse Manager, Talensi District Hopistal, thanked the NGOs for the donation and the education offered to the patients, emphasizing that it would go a long way to strengthen health care delivery. Mrs Alice Dong, a patient and beneficiary of the sensitisation said the education on the patient charter offered was crucial and has exposed her to a lot of things she had no knowledge about. ‘This sensitisation has really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I didn’t know and would be beneficial to me going forward, now l know that l can ask questions when the need arises and not just swallow everything even when l am aggrieved but I also understand that these rights also come with responsibilities on my part, ‘she stated.

Source: Ghana News Agency