By: Joyce kantam Kolamong
The Dialysis Unit of the Tamale Teaching Hospital has taken delivery of a Dialysis machine and five chairs for efficient and effective quality service delivery to patients living with kidney problems.
The items donated by Sankofa Medical Charities, a Medical Charity Organization based in Atlantic, Georgia, are worth 20, 000 US Dollars. A Representative of Sankofa Medical Charities, Dr. Majeed Adams who presented the items said Kidney diseases has been a public health issue in the Northern region and as such the Tamale Teaching hospital is one of the health facilities, that is in need of such benevolence to serve patients.
The incidence of hospital admissions of kidney cases are on the rise in Ghana. Unfortunately, 75 percent of patients report in late stages of the diseases leading to the death of about 50 percent of patients admitted with kidney disease.
The Tamale Teaching Hospital is the biggest referral hospital that serves people in the Northern part of the country and part of Bono and Oti regions. Currently, the hospital serves an average of 25 patients with kidney problems on daily basis. The hospital currently has about 58 patients between the ages of 12 and 85 years on dialysis at the facility.
Therefore, the donation of the items has come at the time the hospital is pressed with equipment and machines considering the number of patients under care. A Representative of Sankofa Medical Charities, Dr. Majeed Adams, said the organization focuses on underserved communities and realizing that Tamale is a need-based community, it decided to support the hospital.
“Kidney problems are now a lot in this community so I think this will serve a lot of purpose here not only Tamale but the other regions can also benefit from this. This is our first first time and we plan to do more.”
Dr. Adams was hopeful the items will help support the facility in treating and serving patients with chronic and other kidney-related diseases.
The Director of Medical Affairs at the Tamale Teaching Hospital, Dr. Abass Adam commended the organization for the kind gesture. According to him, some patients at the unit are sometimes compelled to sit on their hospital beds to receive treatment. A situation, he stressed, presents discomfort to them. Dr. Abass said the donation is an upgraded in the dialysis unit.
“To be honest patients used to sit on their beds for dialysis and this cause waist pains if you sit for a long time on something which is not a normal seat. These are ideal chairs for dialysis, you can not get anything better than this; our dialysis unit has been upgraded today to a nearly well standard and it is supposed to reduce the cost of treatment.”
He promised that the unit will put the items to good use to benefit the region and encourage the organization to seek more support for the hospital.
The Northern Regional Minister, Shaibu Alhassan Shani, who received the items and presented them to the hospital said gestures like this goes a long way to complement the effort of government.
He called on organizations, and individuals to emulate the gesture.