Residents of Pigbengben a community in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region are appealing to public spirited individuals and organisations for resources to roof and furnish a community initiated health facility.
The residents said they are unable to continue to wait until government builds a CHPS compound for them.
Speaking to Radio Ghana in an interview, the Youth Secretary of Pigbengben, Abraham Tam said the youth could not continue to sit unconcerned while expectant mothers and other people suffer in their bid to access healthcare in distant communities.
“We are not looking at the system [government] now, if you are really waiting for government to come help you it will take long. Sometimes you need to take some action before come help you, so we are seeing that it is very important to do this [build the health centre],” he explained.
He said the situation is even worse during the rainy season as the community is completely cut off.
The Youth Secretary of Pigbengben Abraham Tam tells Radio Ghana some items they need to help complete the project saying “we will not be able to purchase most of the materials such as the zinc [roofing sheets], paint, bags of cement. If we had money, we would have not used mud brick, we would have used cement. We also need certain things like padlocks, doors and other things that we would need to furnish the project.”
Pigbengben is a community under the Vieri Electoral Area. The Community is about 5 kilometres from Vieri with an estimated population of 700.
Residents of the community face a lot of challenges which include bad roads, inadequate boreholes as well as the lack of a health centre.
The community initiated health centre which started 2 months ago has a two bedroom apartment, washrooms, OPD ward, maternity ward and a separate delivery room. During the weekend, the young men mould bricks and build the structure while the women fetch water.
The structure is almost at the lentil level. The men in the community contribute 20 Ghana-Cedis while the women contribute 10 Ghana-Cedis.
The Head of the village, Yakubu Ankah was excited that the youth had put their time and resources together to help the community.
Mr. Ankah explained that the “women go through a lot of stress, the community health nurse who does the weighing suggested that we construct it and later get the help of the District Health Director.”
Residents are hopeful that the District Assembly would help them complete the project while connecting the community to the national grid.
This they said would ensure that equipment brought to the health facility would be fully utilized.
Story by Mark Smith
