Rikair, Breath of Hope supports Maamobi General Hospital
A leading medical gas supply company, Rikair Company Limited, has in partnership with Breath of Hope Foundation, donated medical equipment worth GH¢136,000 to the Maamobi General Hospital in Accra.
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The presentation to the 58-year-old facility is to help augment its equipment for efficient health service delivery.
Items donated included stretchers, screens, regulators, surgical units, boxes of nose masks and a number of toys for the children’s ward.
In addition, Rikair also paid some medical bills of mothers at the labour ward and also took prescriptions to buy some drugs for those in need.
Medical oxygen
The Managing Director of Rikair Company Limited, Nana Yaw Asante, who presented the equipment, told the Daily Graphic that as part of a partnership between the company and the hospital, there would now be an uninterrupted supply of medical oxygen to the facility.
That, he said, was because the company as part of its corporate social responsibility had decided to adopt the facility, particularly the children’s ward, to provide it with free medical oxygen as and when needed.
“Every month or whenever they run out of medical oxygen, we will provide them with the medical oxygen for free.
So the idea is that they do not run out of medical oxygen.
“We will also construct a medical gas piping to keep the cylinders outside since they currently have the cylinders in the room which is not safe,” he stated.
Mr Asante further promised that there would be a yearly presentation to the hospital to help them maintain the standards of health delivery.
“We will donate yearly but the provision of the medical oxygen will be as and when they need it adding that it could be twice a year or three times a month,” he assured.
He explained that his outfit also deemed it necessary to include some toys in the items presented to bring some joy to children at the facility.
Children’s ward, expansion
The Rikair MD also said the focus of the company was on children and that everything it did was to help children who were in need.
“This is not a one off activity, we plan to come back to look at the children’s ward and refurbish the place.
“We plan to partner with the hospital and adopt the children’s ward so that all our CSR projects will focus on the children,” he promised.
Mr Asante said the company was using the Maamobi donation as a pilot and indicated that the aim was to also move to other hospitals in other regions, indicating that similar support would be extended to health facilities in Cape Coast in the Central Region, Ho in the Volta Region and the northern sector of the country.
Challenges
The Obstetrician Gynaecologist at the hospital, Dr Seth Hassan, who spoke to the Daily Graphic on behalf of the hospital said the greatest challenge confronting the facility was its theatre.
“We currently have a single operating room and the challenge is that, if we are in theatre and an emergency comes, we need to wait for who is being taken care of to finish before we can do the next one.
“With Obstetrics and Gynaecology, time is of essence and so even if we are able to save the life of that baby, the quality of life might be affected and the mother too is also at risk,” Dr Hassan added.
He was, however, hopeful that the retooling of two theatre suites at the facility would be completed and said a number of wards also needed to be refurbished.
That, Dr Hassan said, was because “we cannot move into the theatre on the last floor if we cannot move the labour ward”.
Presently, he said, the labour ward of the hospital was on the ground floor and stressed the need to tackle all those services at the maternity department, as it was in the catchment area, the Maamobi General Hospital was the main facility that smaller facilities referred cases to round the clock.