High Dependency Unit for St Dominic Hospital
The Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) has inaugurated a COVID-19 High Dependency Unit (HDU) at the St Dominic Hospital in Akwatia to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the Eastern Region.
The HDU under the CHAG’s COVID-19 Response and Institutional Capacity Building (CRIB) project will serve as a major centre for the treatment and management of COVID-19 cases.
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The unit was part of the three strategic HDU projects facilitated by CHAG and fully funded by UKAID at a cost of GH¢800,000 to curb the dire COVID-19 situations in rural areas, following the second wave of the pandemic.
The two other projects in Bawku and Berekum also formed part of the association’s initiative in partnering the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service in the effective management of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country to ensure the continuity of basic essential routine healthcare services and to document and share lessons learnt on the COVID-19 with the wider health sector.
The Executive Director of CHAG, Dr Peter Yeboah, said the four-bed capacity HDU had been refurbished with the needed medical equipment, including ventilators, monitors for checking patients’ vitals and infusion pumps for the administration of accurate doses of medication.
He said CHAG, as part of its support to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, also established six COVID-19 PCR testing centres in the Upper East, Ashanti, Bono, Central and Eastern regions, adding that a cumulative 21,158 tests had been conducted by both the GHS and CHAG centres between July last year and September this year.
Dr Yeboah said adequate health personnel had been trained to man the unit, intended to serve and provide buffer for case management in the northern and middle belts of the country.
On training health practitioners, Dr Yeboah said the CRIB project had taught 6,430 health workers on “Infection Prevention and Control, Case Management, Contact Tracing and Triaging” to handle effectively COVID-19 cases at the treatment centres.
Vaccination
The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Ms Harriet Thompson, urged Ghanaians not to shy away from the vaccines, as that could only increase the number of cases and its consequential deaths across the country.
She said there had been too many deaths associated with COVID-19 since its outbreak, with Ghana hitting over 1,175 deaths. Being Ghana’s longstanding health partner for several decades, she said the United Kingdom committed £6 million of its bilateral funds to support Ghana during the COVID-19 crisis, including the CHAG project.
The Akwatiahene, Osabarima Kofi Boateng III, and the Administrator of the St Dominic Hospital, Reverend Father Ebenezer Abban, expressed gratitude to UKAID and CHAG for their immense support to the health facility and community in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
