First Lady’s campaign yields GH¢7.7 million for Mother and Baby Care Unit at KATH
A campaign by the First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo, to raise funds for the construction of a new Mother and Baby Care Unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) yielded GH¢7.7 million at its launch in Accra last Thursday.
Advertisement
The campaign, dubbed “Save a child, save a mother, save them,” is targeting to raise an initial GH¢10 million for construction works to start on the one-storey unit to ease congestion and pressure on the current unit.
Work is expected to be completed within three months after the initial amount had been raised.
Painting a very gloomy picture of the situation at the unit currently, hospital authorities say at least four babies die a day at the unit due to avoidable causes such as infections caused by congestion and the unavailability of space and equipment to deliver more than two expectant mothers of their babies at a time.
The First Lady’s initiative aims at providing a short-term solution to the situation because hospital authorities had indicated that having additional space or a complementary facility would greatly improve the situation.
Campaign launch
The campaign is being waged in collaboration with the Multimedia Group. Other health facilities nationwide are expected to ultimately benefit from the funds that will be raised.
Launching the Campaign, Mrs Akufo-Addo explained that she initiated the campaign because, as a woman who had the well-being of mothers and children at heart, she was touched by a media report on how women and babies were dying at the KATH due to avoidable causes such as congestion.
She said it was unacceptable and heart-breaking for any expectant mother to die from avoidable causes in an era of modernity.
“The cry of a healthy newborn baby pierces the air, the smile of a mother radiates happiness, gratitude and wonder. This is a picture we are all familiar with but this is a picture that eludes or very quickly fades for some families in our dear Ghana,” she said.
She recounted how a few weeks ago her attention was drawn to a disturbing documentary on the awful conditions at the KATH maternity block.
According to Mrs Akufo-Addo, she and Mrs Samira Bawumia were horrified by what they saw and they resolved to do something about the situation in the interim.
“We immediately decided something must be done not only because we are mothers, but because fate has put us in positions where we simply had to act. Like Esther in the Bible, we felt that God had put us in our positions for a time like this,” she said.
The First Lady said they were a bit apprehensive though, particularly on how to raise the money for the project, and decided to fall on generous, compassionate individuals and organisations.
She urged philanthropists, non-governmental organisations, companies and individuals not to get tired of extending a hand to save a life.
We thank the Japanese government through its embassy in Ghana and others who wish to remain anonymous for their kind donation to the project. No child should lose its life before they have a shot at life,” she said.
Current situation
Explaining how gloomy the situation was at the Mother and Child Unit at the KATH, the Head of Department of the Hospital’s Child Health Directorate, Professor Emmanuel Addo-Yobo, said although the facility had some of the best human resource and expertise the country could boast of, inadequate infrastructure was affecting the quality of healthcare delivery at the hospital.
He said the situation had reached a crisis level as women in labour had no option but to join queues for their turn to be attended to.
He said the labour ward had eight beds and two delivery beds, while the maternity block had two theatres, but only one of it is functional.
Prof. Addo-Yobo said the nursery had only 24 cots, although the hospital delivered about 15 babies on the average daily, in addition to many baby-referral cases and that caused congestion at the nursery.
“At present, we only have three working incubators and four phototherapy units,” he said.
Because of the limited number of cots, Prof. Addo-Yobo said four or five babies had to share a cot, which made the babies pick infections from other babies and other mothers.
New Unit
The new unit is expected to have five delivery beds, three operating rooms and four emergency delivery beds.
It will also have 20 incubators and 20 phototherapy units.
While the current facility uses natural ventilation, which makes the place really hot, the new unit has been designed to have an insulated building with forced cooling.
Prof. Addo-Yobo said because KATH was the only referral hospital in the area, serving the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Central, Western and the Northern regions, it was impossible to reject any referral case, notwithstanding the situation, pointing out that the KATH was also unlike the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital which could be supported by other specialised health facilities such as the Ridge and 37 Military hospitals.