Wa Rotary Club equips UDS hospital with $275,000 medical supplies
The University for Development Studies is planning to expand infrastructure at its hospital on the Wa Campus to be able to accommodate the increasing demand for healthcare services in the Upper West Region and beyond.
The Wa UDS Hospital is currently the only health facility that provides urological, endoscopic, and ophthalmological investigations and services in the whole of Upper West Region, and only shares the burden of orthopaedic services with the government hospital in Nandom.
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It also provides dental care; ear, nose and throat care; laboratory and other specialist services.
Currently, it has an out-patient average attendance of 50 persons per day although daily attendance sometimes reaches 75 persons.
With a modest staff strength of 34, it offers a 24-hour service to residents of Wa and beyond.
In just the first half of 2018, the hospital records show that 5,298 patients had accessed health care at the hospital, with just 17 per cent of the number being students of the university.
The Director of Health Services at UDS, Dr Kabiru Koredele Azeez, said the facility needed to expand in both infrastructure and scope of service delivery since it was beginning to assume greater responsibility in the region and neighbouring communities as a compliment for the regional hospital.
Dr Azeez said this in an interview after the hospital received assorted medical supplies worth a total $275,000 from the Rotary Club of Wa.
The items included incubators, laboratory equipment, oxygen tubes, beds, surgical equipment, and a long list of consumables.
Overflow of supply
The previously 20-bed facility could only add 10 more beds and accommodate less than 20 per cent of the total content of the double 40-footer containers in the hospital’s current modest physical structure.
Dr Azeez said the University may distribute some of the items to its two other hospitals so they could be used to provide needed services elsewhere.
He said the University would explore innovative ways to finance an ambulance for the hospital to boost its emergency care services.
Acting Principal of the university, Prof. Sylvester Z. Galaa, said the services of the Wa UDS Hospital “continue to target vulnerable groups such as women, children and the aged”.
He said the equipment would upgrade the quality of service delivered by the hospital.
The hospital was set up in November 2015 to serve the about 6,500 students and lecturers of the Wa Campus, and members of neighbouring communities, but now serves patients beyond the region, including persons from Burkina Faso, according to hospital records.
Generous contribution
Speaking on behalf of the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Gabriel Ayum Teye, the acting Principal said the hospital was well on curse in fulfilling its mandate to be a technologically-led healthcare service provider in a timely manner.
He expressed gratitude to Rotary Club of Wa and its affiliate organisations, describing the gestures as a generous contribution to humanity.
The president of Rotary Club of Wa, Madam Rosina Ta-ang Yenli, said it was the hope of the Club that the medical supplies would be “put to good use to help save lives and restore smiles to the faces of many”.
She said having already drilled five boreholes in Wa West District, Nadowli-Kaleo District and the Wa Municipality, distributed assorted reading materials and textbooks to kindergarten and primary school in Wa West District, among other projects, the Rotary Club of Wa had well demonstrated the organisation’s mantra of “service above self”.
The Minister for the region, Alhaji Sulemana Alhassan, praised the University for its efficient healthcare delivery system and said it was a perfect example of quality service delivery in any human endeavour.
