Residents of Birim North to access quality dental care

Residents of the Birim North District in the Eastern Region now have access to quality dental care as Vivo Energy Ghana, the Shell licensee, has donated a modern dental chair to the New Abirem Government Hospital.

The donation, which formed part of the company’s community investment programme, was done in collaboration with the Newmont Golden Ridge Limited, Akyem Mine.

The dental chair

The modern dental chair has the following features: an LED display screen which helps patients to view live pictures of what is  ongoing in their mouth so that they can appreciate discussions with the dental surgeon better; an intra-oral camera which captures live pictures for diagnosing and for e-records and inbuilt x-ray viewer that allows dental surgeons to view manually processed x-rays; a LED fast hand piece which emits light when drilling and a water cooled straight hand piece that allows the dentist to perform surgical extraction much more easily.

At the handover ceremony, the Managing Director of Vivo Energy Ghana, Mr Ebenezer Faulkner, said: “As a mining community in which our client Newmont operates, your needs are of deep importance to us. With this chair, the New Abirem Government Hospital can deliver dental services to the people of the Birim North District with its population of about 90,000”. This will ease the burden of patients travelling long distances to the Kwahu Government Hospital to access dental care”, he said.

Improving lives

The General Manager of the Newmont Golden Ridge Limited, Akyem Mine, Mr Joep Coenen, said the gesture by Vivo Energy Ghana was a true testament of its partnership and sense of community spirit. “Newmont will continue to work with all our business partners in a manner consistent with our purpose of creating value and improving lives through sustainable mining,” he said.

The District Health Director, Mr K. Azarugo, who was full of praise for the gesture, appealed for the support of other corporate institutions to equip hospitals and clinics within the district to an appreciable standard.

The acting Kotoku Gyasehene and Chief of New Abirem, Obrempong Kwasi Amoh Kyeretwie said: “I am impressed with the massive infrastructure development in the district as a result of Newmont and its business partners including Vivo Energy Ghana.”