Disagreement Over the Choice of Ebola Isolation Center’s in Ghana

The medical health personnel on staff at some of Ghana’s hospitals have expressed growing resentment about the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) selection of certain health centers in the country as designated isolation centers.
One of the hospitals whose authorization as a government approved isolation center, which has raised grave concern is the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). The Komfo Anokye Hospitals is located in Kumasi, a densely populated city in the Ashanti Region.
In the opinion of some medical health professionals, KATH is the least desirable location as an isolation and treatment center, due to the significant patient population at the hospital who are already at risk of contracting nosocomial infections.
The hospital which is already understaffed has too many immuno-compromised/ immuno- suppressed patients who are highly susceptible to other pathogens and any other additional risk no matter how minimal is deleterious to their quality of life..
In addition, since KATH is located in Ghana’s second largest city, it has a significant outpatient population who are at higher risk of being infected by the Ebola virus if there are failures in containing the virus in designated isolation units of the hospital.
Furthermore, an infected outpatient at KATH could serve as patient zero to ignite an epidemic of epic proportions in one of Ghana’s largest hospitals
The ideal choice of an treatment center for such a viral pathogen needs to be one where the movement and transport of infected patients pose minimal risk to a large population. In a struggling economy with an overburdened healthcare sector, unfortunately options are few