Medical bills for 14 patients at Eastern Regional Hospital have been settled

Fourteen patients comprising mothers and their children, as well as adults undergoing treatment and others discharged from the Eastern Regional Hospital, Koforidua but could not pay their medical bills, totalling GH¢23,000, breathed a sigh of relief last Friday.

This was because the 1984 Year Group of the Pope John Senior High School in Koforidua decided to bail them out.

The year group took such a good Samaritan gesture as part of activities to mark its 40th anniversary celebrations.

In addition, the year group also presented 10 packs of tissue paper to the hospital’s children’s ward.

Making the presentation at the hospital, the leader of the year group, Philip Boateng Mensah, said it was a pity that the patients should be in that situation in a country endowed with abundant resources.

Mr Mensah said it was disheartening that many of those who could not even afford to pay their medical bills were the ones whose taxes were keeping the country moving, and as such, they must be properly catered for. He said it was in that direction that the year group decided to pay the medical bills for the patients.

He explained that the year group decided to include such a humanitarian gesture in its 40th anniversary celebrations.

A Senior Health Service Administrator of the hospital, Lebel Ayamdoo, said the hospital did not in any way discriminate against patients who went for treatment and that all patients were treated equally.

He stated that the decision of the year group to settle the medical bills of such vulnerable patients, apart from offering them relief, had also saved the hospital a lot of money.

The continued stay of the discharged patients in the hospital, Mr Ayamdoo pointed out, had become an albatross on the neck of the facility.

He said in that direction, the hospital’s social welfare department had to come in to critically identify patients who could not settle their medical bills to be assisted.