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Establish a Hospice at Korle Bu

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Daniel Asare, is calling for the establishment a Hospice, a home that will provide care for people who are terminally ill.

He said the Hospice when established at Korle Bu will help address the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients such as those with stroke and cancers.

He explained that patients with such chronic diseases often do not receive the necessary care after being discharged, either because “their relatives were not available or refuse to take them back home.”

He made the call in an interview with the Daily Graphic after a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Global Outreach Consortium, donated some surgical and medical equipment worth GH¢500,000 to the hospital in Accra on November 15, 2018.

The presentation was done with support from the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB).

Challenges

Dr Asare added that although the “no bed syndrome” at the hospital had been addressed significantly, the “acute environment at the hospital still prevented the hospital to accommodate persons with terminal illnesses.”

“I think the Ministry of Health has some plans to construct a Hospice in Dodowa, but we think that Korle-bu can also have one,” he added.
Stating some challenges at the hospital, the CEO said most of the equipment in use where obsolete, of which they were not able to be replace due to low revenue collected.

He mentioned among others, structures that needed refurbishment, to make them safe and appropriate to provide quality healthcare.

He said “they need help with the maternal block, which is even falling apart, the children’s block, the surgical and medical block, and an establishment of a trauma and orthopedic centre of excellence.

“We know that government cannot do it alone so we want to partner the private sector, to put up these centres of excellence,” he said.

Donation

Touching on the donation made, he said the equipment had come in handy especially during this time that the National Health Insurance Scheme payments were delayed.

He thanked the group for their gesture saying: the Items, which include a neurosurgical microscope, would help a great deal in conducting neurosurgical operations at the hospital.

Surgeries

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Global Outreach Consortium, Dr Priscilla Vandyah-Sey, said their move was part of efforts to fulfill their core mandate of providing advance healthcare for the underprivileged.

She said the purpose for donating the items was to defray the cost of surgeries and to support the hospital in providing healthcare for the underprivileged.

Touching on their activities, she said they had conducted 18 outreaches across the country, of which they had screened about 3000 people, with 1200 needing surgery.

“So far we have been able to conduct surgeries for only 200 people, meaning we still have a backlog of 1000 free surgeries. We are, therefore, still mobilising funds to proceed with the surgeries left,” she said.

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