Medical team treats 150 at Bole

About 150  persons with various medical conditions including hernia, cleft lips and burns, have undergone  free surgical operations to correct their defects at the Bole District Hospital in the Northern Region.

The 31-member medical team, comprising  11 doctors and 20 medical staff from the Plastic and Surgery departments of Korle-Bu and the Tamale Teaching hospitals led by a Plastic Surgeon at Korle-Bu, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, performed the surgical operations.

The three-day medical outreach was to help improve the health and well-being of the people of Bole and its environs.

The programme was sponsored and organised by Brent Medical Foundation, a United Kingdom (UK)- based non-governmental organisation (NGO), in collaboration with its local partners, Liekfial Medicals, the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ghana  Health Service (GHS).

Briefing newsmen on the programme,  the Medical Superintendent of the Bole District Hospital, Dr Josephat Nyuzaghl, said the beneficiaries were mostly farmers from poor communities in the district who were diagnosed with  medical conditions but could not afford the cost of the surgery.

He said the hospital served over 140,000 people in the Bole and Sawla, Tuna, Kalba  districts in the Northern Region, and as a result of the huge population, most of the health needs of the people were not met.

 Dr Nyuzaghl said the collaboration between the hospital and the foundation was, therefore, timely to meet the health needs of the people in the district and its environs and also to provide surgical operations which were beyond the scope of the hospital.

 He expressed his appreciation to the foundation and its local representatives, the medical team and the other collaborators in the programme and said they looked forward to such collaborations to meet the health needs of the people.

The founder of Brent Medical Foundation, Mr Richard Frempong, said the free surgical operations provided to the people of Bole and its environs formed part of the social responsibility of the foundation.

 He added that the collaboration with the hospital, the MoH and the GHS would continue every year to help improve on the health and well-being of the people.

 Mr Frempong also said as part of efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality in the district and the country, the foundation, through its local representative donated a new medical instrument called Umbicut costing of GH¢4,000 to the Bole Hospital.

 He said each box contained 100 pieces of the disposable sterile device for cutting and clamping the umbilical cords of newborns to prevent infections, which had been identified as one of the major contributory factors to maternal and infant deaths in the country.

 Mr Frempong said the foundation had also decided to renovate the children's ward of the Bole Hospital and  provide the facility with medical equipment to enhance health care delivery in the district.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Liekfial Medical, sole distributors of Umbicut, Mr Kofi Fynn, later demonstrated how the device operates.