GNPC supports expansion of Korle Bu Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre
The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has presented a cheque for $1 million to the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for the completion of the centre’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
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When completed, the centre will have a High Dependency Unit (HDU), a laboratory, a physiotherapist’s gym, a leg ulcer clinic, consulting rooms, a laundry, a sterilisation unit, among other facilities.
Construction work on the facility started in 2006 but it has stalled since 2009 due to a number of challenges, particularly financing.
Presenting the cheque, Mr Alex Mould, the Chief Executive officer of the GNPC, said the company was not interested in supporting only football but also education and health.
According to him, the GNPC was of the conviction that a well-resourced Korle Bu Teaching Hospital would be able to generate its own funds to support its operations.
He indicated that the donation was just the beginning of various forms of assistance which the GNPC, together with its oil-mining company partners, would give to the hospital to enable it to provide world-class services for patients.
Postgraduate training
He announced that the GNPC would assist the centre to build a training centre for postgraduate training of health personnel to enable them to make a meaningful impact on the numerous patients who visited hospitals.
Receiving the cheque, the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, expressed the ministry’s appreciation to the GNPC for the gesture.
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GNPC’s support
According to Dr Bampoe, following the outbreak of the Ebola disease in parts of West Africa, the GNPC presented $2 million to the ministry to assist in preparations to curb the outbreak of the disease in the country.
He said the government alone could not provide the needed support for health facilities across the country and always appreciated collaborations that would help provide services and care for patients, as well as offer training to doctors and nurses.
The Director of the centre, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, described the GNPC support as huge, since it would go a long way to assist the centre to realise its dream of offering the very best of medical services to its numerous patients across the length and breadth of the country.
He said doctors at the centre had looked on helplessly as patients died when they could have survived various degrees of burns if the centre were endowed with a proper ICU.
Reconstructive centres
He said currently there were about 13 reconstructive burns units at major hospitals in the country.
He said between 95 and 150 surgeries were conducted per month at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, with an outpatient figure of more than 9,000 patients seen in a year.
He said 80 per cent of burn injuries were preventable, and that accidents involving petrol accounted for 44 per cent of the fatalities.