News

Last week we wrote about our new project called ‘Develop A Ward’ in Mampong Maternity Hospital. Room by room, we intend to refurbish the hospital and provide it with modern equipment. And we will keep a close eye to see that our improvements are properly maintained.

Imagine our feelings when we were immediately promised two amazing sums of money to start the work – almost enough to cover the whole Mother and Baby Unit. We haven’t decided yet, but we’ll probably spend the it on some of the really important equipment the hospital lacks.

Thanks to our donors, halfway through 2019 will be a much better time to be born than 2018. We couldn’t be more grateful.

We’re starting a new project called ‘Develop A Ward’ in Mampong Maternity Hospital. The hospital has 55 beds catering annually for 2,000 deliveries and serves 102,300 people in Mampong District. It is also the principal referral point for maternity cases in its own and several neighbouring Districts.

We’ve chosen five rooms in different areas of the hospital to start with, and talked at length to the staff. They’ve told us how the absence of equipment damages their work. If, for example, if they had a scanner (price £405) they could measure the baby’s pulse and position and if necessary, rush the patient to theatre. A portable ultrasound machine that could move round the hospital would be only £4,035. Dozens of babies’ lives would be saved.

On this basis, we’ve put together and costed ‘shopping lists’ of everything needed in these five rooms. They range in price from £356 to refurbish a room in the antenatal ward to £12,439 to set up the mother and baby unit. We will use our own staff to oversee the work and they will account for every penny spent. And when we’ve finished the job, we will raise money to do the same for five more rooms.

Now we just need some donors to fund them. Please let us know if you have any ideas where we could find it.

Here’s a little interview with Mr Fuseini Amadu, Chief of Galiba Village, 75 years old, who has just had a second cataract operation, thanks to Hands International and the MCEC.

Nana Fuseini used to live in Yendi, Northern Ghana, where he farmed yam, cocoyam and maize. He is a member of the Dagomba tribe and his first language is Dabani rather than the Twi spoken by local people. He came south to Ashanti to find an easier life about fifteen years ago, when climate change made farming in Yendi very difficult.
He has two wives who bore him fifteen children, but five died. He is a Muslim.
In Galiba, he also farmed and his crops included maize, yam, groundnut and cow peas. As he got blinder he stopped working as he was afraid he’d hurt himself. Also, he stopped being able to distinguish between weeds and the crops he’d planted. He spent one year at home. Now he is back on the farm.
Ashanti Development operated on one eye some time ago. Now the other has also been operated on. He says both operations were successful, though the second eye looks as if it has hairs in it.
He prays for prosperity always to follow the donor. He prays God to bless everything he does. He says he is a human being so he can only say his thanks, but he knows that God will hear them.

We’ve been given an amazing donation from the Health and Nutrition Development Society (HANDS), to be spent on cataract operations in the Ashanti.

Our home village, Gyetiase, has an eye clinic with an operating theatre, funded and equipped by SpecSavers. When we have identified enough patients who need cataract operations, we employ surgeons from Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital to come and operate on them. We are eternally short of money to do this, and often turn away patients through lack of funds.

HANDS International, working with the Muslim Community & Education Centre, has given us funds for large numbers of operations, and we are eternally grateful to them and in particular the HANDS founder, Professor AG Billoo.