By: Hannah Dadzie
Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu has inaugurated advanced neurosurgical equipment for conjoined babies at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital. The equipment includes Curettes used for precise and delicate microsurgery.
The neurosurgical equipment which is the first in West Africa will not only used to separate conjoined babies but other related neurosurgical surgeries in the country. Inaugurating the equipment, the Minister said this will help those who travel to other parts of the world to seek brain and spine surgeries to do so at ease.
“We’ve been talking about trying to create medical hub to stop people from traveling far away to places like Turkey, India, China, America, for surgical interventions. The belief now is that new surgeons l has now got the tools that they are going to work with will be able to slow down a number of these interventions outside our country.” he noted
He therefore asked the management of the hospital to keep a maintenance culture for the equipment to be kept long.
“Ridge Hospital is the center of excellence now for spine and brain surgery and will be destined to be one of the centers for medical tourism in our country. I was going to ask if you have assigned a service level agreement for maintenance with the suppliers if that has not been done. If you are not able to do a lot more to keep them for a whole long period and they go bad. So, the new surgeons make sure that this equipment. ” the Health Minister said.
The Medical Director of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Dr. Emmanuel K. Srofenyoh assured the Minister that the surgeons will do their best for the Conjoined twins and also leverage the equipment to provide more service for Ghanaians and anybody who will come for treatment in the country. He said management will sign the necessary service agreement to make sure the advanced neurosurgical equipment is maintained and serves the country for a period of time.
“We want to express our gratitude to government for this equipment. Maintenance has been the culture of this hospital, all the equipment in this hospital is already under service level agreement, so we will extend this to the new equipment so that it will be well maintained. Dr. Srofenyoh said
The Health Minister said it is the hope of the government to put more of this equipment in other facilities to help in quality health delivery. He asked the young medical officers to specialize in neurosurgeons to help save patients with neurosurgical diseases.
