Who Needs KBFF?
Korle-Bu Family Fund exists to provide financial and material support for needy children admitted to the Pediatric Unit of Korle Bu Hospital in Accra, Ghana.
Currently about 30-45% of all (discharged) newborns and infants who receive care at the hospital are detained by the hospital’s administration and staff until their fees are paid in full. As a result, the various children’s wards remain overcrowded and understaffed resulting in poor levels of personal attention for each patient. The Korle Bu Family Fund has been set up to meet the practical needs of impoverished Ghanaian parents and their children. Like most of the developing world, Ghana does not have a national health service or health insurance which means that payment for any health service received must be paid in cash at the time of need. This has led to an abominable situation where sometimes people needing medical help are refused medical assistance until they have made payment.
The situation is even more distressing because of the manner in which the cash payment system is affecting children. When parents are unable to meet the cost of healthcare for their children, these children are effectively detained by the hospital until the required payment has been made. There is no doubt that this is against the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention to which Ghana is a signatory and breaks Article 9 of the aforementioned convention.
According to Article 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child:
‘States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child’s place of residence.’
One can imagine the distress that children as well as their parents will face when forced to stay in hospital against their will because they have been unable to make the required payments. Our response to this intolerable situation has been to set up KBFF with the goal of providing financial aid to those parents who are not able to meet the high cost of healthcare in core. KBFF will thus be meeting the practical needs of Ghanaian parents and their offspring. However the vision for KBFF is that the fund will evolve to not only meet the practical but also the strategic needs of Ghanaian parents.
The root cause of the abominable situation in which we now find ourselves is poverty. Parents are unable to pay for the healthcare costs of their children simply because they lack the money to do so. It is not the intention of KBFF to become a dependency tool for Ghanaian parents. Rather, we hope to see KBFF evolving into a social enterprise which will be able to provide employment opportunities and wealth creation for impoverished Ghanaians.
There are currently six members on the board, each with specific functions involving implementation, strategy, capital deployment, and mission and sourcing. Every board member has a responsibly to organize fundraising efforts in their local community, and to work towards securing dedicated donor partners as well. We hope to have committed donors who will pledge to give a certain amount monthly. The goal is to have 100 partners by the end of 2008.
With the funds received, we intend to begin by assisting patients who are unable to pay for much needed labs, medications, minor surgical procedures (e.g. lymph node biopsies, insertion of chest drains etc), other investigations (e.g. CT scans, ultrasounds etc.), as well as to assist with payment of outstanding bills. We will begin by helping with outstanding bills from the main ward, where costs of treatment range from $30 - $50 and then progress to the N.I.C.U, where costs for neonatal intensive care range from $250 - $800. Once our capacity increases, KBFF can expand the current criteria and limitations to extend to other wards of the hospital and satellite healthcare projects.