24.January 2025 – Farewell to our partner and more hospital visits
It’s always sad when you have to say goodbye to a project partner after a week of intensive collaboration. This time, however, it’s more of a “See you soon!” because we expect to be back again soon. Once again, we take the opportunity to thank “Prof”, as he is called by many here, for the organization of the past few days.
We were also particularly interested in his assessment of our work over the last few days. We are aware that our presentation style and visualizations do not necessarily correspond to the style that is usually practiced here in Ghana. According to his own statement, he was delighted, for example, that clear deadlines and responsibilities have already been clarified at this early stage. Even the “plastering” of the walls in “his” meeting room obviously causes him no problems. He also assured us once again of his full support in finally getting the containers with the remaining beds out of the port. He was very confident that the matter could soon be resolved in our interests. Only together can we achieve our goals!
We were particularly looking forward to our visit to Vivian, as we had very positive memories of her CHPS small hospital in Dumasua almost two years ago in 2023. This small hospital, where more than 150 children are born every year, is run in an exemplary manner and shows how, with a lot of commitment and even more management strength, a hospital can be run very well without a large budget, even in a rural region. Back then, everything was in excellent condition and perfectly organized.
So it was not very surprising for us when we were informed at the entrance with an oversized poster that Vivian 2024 had won the 2nd Ghana Health Service Excellence Award in the “General Staff” category. In our opinion, she absolutely deserved to win this award. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to talk to her in detail.
Nevertheless, the discussion with her during this visit was also very informative. She made it clear to us how important it is for every patient to have a bed for treatment. She was almost ashamed to admit that this is not always the case at her facility due to the lack of beds. She then tries to transfer the patient to another facility. However, this often fails because the patients cannot afford the transport, as it always has to be paid for privately.
Our third visit was to the Holy Family Hospital in Berekum. We always enjoy coming to Berekum, where Sister Reena runs a regional and now also a teaching hospital with great commitment and expertise. We set up one of our first HITA-PC Labs for this facility 12 years ago. As two years ago, the welcome was very, very warm.
First of all, we apologized to her that the 60 beds allocated to this hospital were still in the port in Accra and that our partners had not yet been able to get the containers to Berekum. Sister Reena not only offered us her help, she also wants to speak to the bishop again to perhaps achieve something from that side.
When we asked her for help with our planned “know-how hub”, in which the hospital’s two medical technicians, Walter and Courage, are to play an important role, she was immediately willing to support this idea too. The maintenance of medical equipment and hospital beds is a major problem in Ghana. Many beds end up on the scrap heap because even the smallest maintenance or repair work cannot be carried out. Our idea is to set up a maintenance base for the Bono region with the two technicians mentioned above. This base will have all the important information and, above all, the expertise to support colleagues at other hospitals.
A second project that Sister Reena asked us to set up is another computer lab for the now more than 1,400 nursing and midwifery students. To this end, she organized a quick visit to the two existing labs.
We were thrilled by what we saw there. Two labs had been set up there with the simplest of means. In order to find a way to combat the dust, they had simply thought about covering the monitors, computers and keyboards with a protective cover. When in use, these are simply removed and stored temporarily. As the individual boxes were also quite small here, small trolleys or a kind of wooden stool were built on which the computers could be placed in the footwell. This keeps them off the floor and the protective cover protects them from dust. A cost-effective and clever solution that we would also like to see in other facilities.