Meeting MDG’s 4&5, our prime concern - Methodist Health Mission
To the chiefs and people of Donkokrom and its environs in the Afram Plains north district, the best thing that has ever been of tremendous benefit to them is the medical outreach programme offered by volunteer health professionals from the Methodist Church, Ghana.
To them, travelling from Accra to the Afram Plains, particularly the six-hour boat journey on the Volta Lake, to have a feel of life that goes on in the rural communities endeared them to the indigenes.
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However, moving a step further to provide free medical care left an indelible mark that will forever be cherished by the present and future generations of the rural folks in the Afram Plains.
The outreach programme, which was organised by the Methodist Church, lasted for seven days, but the trails left behind would last many years, in that, a total of 1500 people who have benefited now enjoy healthy lives, engaging in productive ventures, and generating revenue for themselves and their families.
The girl
Those with eye defects that restricted their movements are now back to their farms due to successful surgeries and women with fibroids were managed.
Perhaps, one person who was very grateful for the outreach programme was a 14–year-old girl who had defects on both hands. The girl, a Class Six pupil, had six fingers on both hands, and had dropped out of school because of the stigma attached to her defect.
While some members of her community were almost always staring at her anywhere she went, her classmates openly accused her of being a witch, a situation that kept her indoors.
Incidentally, the girl had visited her parents at Natonabah at the time the outreach programme was in session, and when the volunteers chanced upon her, they immediately performed a successful surgical operation to remove the extra fingers.
Today, the girl has returned to school to the relief of her parents, and reports indicate that she is progressing steadily.
Methodist health
Briefing the Daily Graphic about their operations, the Director of the Methodist Health Services, Dr Enoch Osafo, said partnering the government to heal the sick, venturing into various deprived communities to promote health through screening and healthcare delivery, and undertaking medical outreach with specialists who provide health care to people in under-served and deprived areas were their core business.
He said the Methodist Health Services, which had also been building the capacity of staff to enhance efficiency in their operations and undertaking research works in their hospitals and clinics to bring good health to the people, was under the Ministry of the Methodist Church Ghana to provide healing to the sick and promote healthy communities.
According to Dr Osafo, beneficiary communities such as Bruben and Ntonaboma around the Volta Lake, as well as Nyankokopen on the Dwarf Island, Tiase and Donkokrom underwent hernia and eye surgeries, dental care and general medical services because they had no means to access medical care.
” In all, we provided quality health care to 1,500 people in these communities during our visit, and to make it sustainable, we worked with the Donkokrom Presby hospital which was used as the base for the surgeries. We also worked with the district health directorate so that it becomes a teamwork to enhance follow-ups,” Dr Osafo explained.
Motive
On whether they were using the healthcare services to entice the ordinary Ghanaian to the church, Dr Osafo said “as a church, we try to follow the steps of Jesus Christ who went about doing good and healing all kinds of diseases. Our prime motive is to be obedient to Christ, so we take any opportunity to serve people to promote their standard of living, hence providing such affordable and free health care. We are not using our services to entice people to the church, but want them to be healthy to enjoy life more meaningfully. We do our work diligently to make the people healthy, both physically and spiritually. However, we also respond to the spiritual needs of our patients when the need arises. ”
He said since efficient healthcare delivery was key in providing sustainable revenue generation among people in rural communities, the Methodist Health Services considered it paramount in setting up a number of hospitals and clinics in the country.
Nzulezu health care
He mentioned that a clinic was established in 2014 at Nzulezu in the Western Region which had become the central point of health care in the town.
“We use our doctors and nurses in the Methodist Church to serve the people at Nzulezu. This is because by the nature of the community, they need to travel to the hinterland before accessing health care which is costly, so providing the facility and sometimes free medical care has ameliorated their predicaments,” Dr Osafo stressed.
He said besides the health facility, there had been regular education on how to maintain a clean environment to prevent waterborne and other diseases.
Wenchi and Ankaase hospitals
The Wenchi Methodist hospital in the Brong Ahafo Region, which serves as the district hospital in the area, and the Ankaase Methodist hospital, which serves as the district hospital in Afigya-Kwabre in the Ashanti Region are the two key health facilities established by the church in their quest to provide affordable and sustainable healthcare to the beneficiary communities and their environs.
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Three specialists, medical assistants and a number of nurses are providing a 24-hour healthcare at the Ankaase hospital, and at Wenchi, a specialist in urology, an orthopaedist and two medical doctors, as well as two assistants and a number of nurses are diligently responding to the healthcare needs of the people.
On the effectiveness of the facilities, including the 19 clinics, he said “ the key thing is accessing quality health care delivery, and our analysis indicate that we are providing quality and affordable health care to between 800,000 and a million outpatients annually, and over 12,000 in-patients also on annual basis .“
On their research work, he said it had been operational to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their services with the view to improving their services to the people.
“We want to see how our services are impacting the communities, and how to serve them better. We also want to identify critical issues to be more efficient in our healthcare delivery,” he explained.
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Future prospects
On the future, he said “we want to specialise in some of the facilities for people to access them more meaningfully. Since we have urologists and orthopaedists at Wenchi, we intend improving the facility to make it a centre of excellence in providing such services in the area, so that patients in every part of Ghana can receive urology and orthopaedic care”.
At Ankaase, he said, plans were far advanced to develop a women and children’s centre, which would address the needs of women and children holistically.
“The focus at Ankaase will be on women and children because those are some of the major challenges we face as a country. Maternal and children mortalities are quite high and because of this, Ghana was unable to meet the MDG goals four and five. That is why we want to focus on such areas by specialising to address the challenges meaningfully.
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Challenges
On the challenges, he said top among them was funding. “Paying our staff is a major cost component. Since we need to provide quality healthcare, we poach staff with the requisite expertise, so in spite of government support, in terms of such staff, we recruit to fill some gaps and this is expensive,” he explained.
To address such challenges, he said “we are mobilising Methodist health professionals in Ghana to provide health care to our facilities when they are on leave to bridge the gap”.