‘Reduce visits to patients at health facilities’
The Medical Superintendent at the Princess Marie Louise (PML) Hospital, Dr Maame Yaa Nyarko, has urged members of the public to reduce the rate at which they visit patients at health facilities as a measure to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said the continuous trooping of people to health facilities to visit their sick relatives had a higher tendency of spreading the COVID-19 pandemic.
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"As health professionals, we are encouraging people not to troop to hospitals to visit patients because it is not safe at this time of the coronavirus outbreak.
"Our hospital is for children and most of the time some parents who bring their children here come with other people, including grandparents and we all know that this poses higher risks to us. What we are saying is that they should reduce such visits to only the immediate parents of the child," she said.
Donation
Dr Nyarko said this when officials of Fuel Trade Limited (FuelTrade), a petroleum service provider, donated some personal protective equipment (PPE) and handwashing equipment to the hospital towards fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
The items which included face masks, gloves, bed sheets, gallons of hand sanitisers, Veronica buckets, towels, medical consumables and toiletries were valued at GH¢50, 000.
The Director of Fuel Trade, Mr Kwabena Agyei-Boahene, presented the items to Dr Nyarko on the premises of PML.
The company also presented the same value of equipment to the Accra Regional Hospital which is one of the holding centres for COVID-19 patients, thus bringing the total donations to GH¢100,000.
Timely donation
Dr Nyarko described the donation as timely because it came at a time the hospital needed more PPE and other items for daily use.
“We all know that we are in difficult times as a country because of COVID-19 and handwashing with soap, and use of hand sanitisers has become the order of the day. For us as a hospital, these items mean a lot to us because we have to ensure that our staff and everyone who comes here for health care perform more hand hygiene,” she said.
Social responsibility
Mr Agyei-Boahene said the decision to donate to the two health facilities was in line with the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles to make an impact on lives.
“We are motivated to donate because the government has come out with measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic which affects everybody. As a company, we cannot sit on the fence and that is why we have also contributed our widow’s mite to fight it,” he said.
He added that it was important for local companies to be responsive to the national call to support the fight against COVID-19 since their existence depended on the health of people.