Monday Market Day Clinic

Every third day is market day in Nalerigu. People come in to town from all of the surrounding villages to sell, buy and socialize. Many also come to the hospital while they are in town and since there has been no clinic for two days over the weekend, Monday market clinic has always been one of the busiest days of the week. Today we finished around the unheard of time of 3:30 in the afternoon.

There is an explanation for the short Monday Market Clinic day. Ghana has in the past few years introduced a national health insurance scheme and encouraged everyone to sign up, though it is not mandatory. The insurance covers all medical care rendered at a clinic or hospital, covering consultation, labs, medications, admissions and surgery. For the past 8-9 months hospitals have not been paid for services provided under the insurance scheme. As a result, all mission hospitals have announced that they will not be taking insurance and patients must pay cash for any treatment they receive. As a result few patients have felt they can afford to come to the hospital. And so we had a light day.

And since not many are willing to pay for elective surgery, we only have 3 cases scheduled for tomorrow.

 I hope to be able to get some more pictures to post over the next few days.

Ladies on the way to market