Dr.

Opoku Ware Ampomah, Chief Executive Officer of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), has addressed concerns regarding the recent repairs of the hospital's elevators.

This clarification comes after the elevator in the Surgical Department was fixed following a visit by Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Health Committee.

Dr.

Ampomah explained that the issues with the elevators, which were installed in 2012 through sponsorship from the National Health Insurance Authority, have been ongoing due to voltage fluctuations in the Korle Bu area.

He noted that these voltage surges have been the primary cause of frequent faults in the elevators over the past two years.

In response to these recurring issues, the hospital had already planned to replace the lifts as part of its broader maintenance and improvement programme, documented in its centenary celebration plans.

Specifically, the head of the Surgical Department had initiated the procurement process for a new lift, with all necessary approvals already in place before the MP's visit.

Dr.

Ampomah emphasised that the recent repairs were part of an ongoing plan, not a reaction to external pressure. "The elevators were placed there in 2012 through the sponsorship of the National Health Insurance Agency and so over the last two years, we've noticed that there seem to be a number of faults happening with the elevators. "One of the things that has triggered this number of faults is the fact that in the general Korle Bu area there are voltage fluctuations so sometimes there are voltage surges and it affects the functions of the machines but then last year we made up a plan which is on our programme of work.

It is even on our centenary celebration document that we are going to replace the lifts in the tower blocks." "So this is something that we are even doing and even for the surgical block specifically the head of the department had written to me and all the approvals had been given through the procurement process to get them a new lift but the fact is that the lifts are not the ordinary type of lifts that are easy to get. "These are lifts that have to be big enough to take up the hospital bed with some people standing around it.

So these have to be custom-made.

So even from the time of order to delivery, it takes a minimum of six months.

So we are still going through the process as we speak," he told Channel One News' Eno Sarfo in an interview on Tuesday, September 3.

When the recent fault occurred, Dr Ampomah said immediate measures were taken to repair the lift, although the process took longer than expected.

He said this necessitated a reorganisation of hospital operations to ensure that emergencies were still managed effectively, with other wards and theatres designated to handle urgent cases. "So when this fault happened, we had to now take immediate measures to make sure that the lift is repaired.

Unfortunately, it took much longer than we were expecting and so we had to then reorder our operations in the sense that we were still taking care of the emergencies, but we had to designate other wards and other theatres to take up the emergencies and then some of the urgent electives…So this was done over the last one week." "So eventually the lifts were fixed on Sunday…On Sunday evening the gentleman who fixed the lift and who was monitoring thought that there was a particular sensor that he thinks should be replaced so he advised us not to use it on Monday morning till he replaced the sensor so by 10, 11 a.m.

Monday he had come to replace the sensor so normal work had resumed," he stated.

Dr Ampomah emphasised that the timing of the repair completion was purely coincidental and not influenced by any external comments or visits. "You think that if something couldn't be fixed for a whole week and then because somebody came and said something and then suddenly it gets fixed.

I mean that is not the fact.

It doesn't even make sense.

I think that is just a pure coincidence," he stated.