Over 200 people with various forms of body defects in the Upper East Region have been screened and are currently benefit from a free plastic surgery to correct their deformities.
The team of Doctors and Nurses who are currently conducting the exercise at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital is led by a Ghanaian Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Kwame Obeng.
Dr. Obeng who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RESTORE said most of the people are unable to afford the cost involved in plastic surgery even though they are in critical need of it to correct their conditions.
R.E.S.T.O.R.E. is an acronym for: Restoring Emotional Stability Through Outstanding Reconstructive Efforts.
Since 2008, Dr. Obeng has been leading a team of doctors to Ghana and other countries once every year to provide free surgery to people who are in dire need of plastic surgery but cannot afford it. This project is undertaken under Dr. Obeng’s ‘Restore’ charity organization.
The Bolgatanga Regional Hospital also known as the Upper East Regional Hospital is the major referral Centre and a first point of call for emergencies of all kinds of health related incidents, yet has no Doctors to manage specialist cases.
It is horrifying to know that the 206- facility designed to serve a population of about 1, 124, 193 has just seven Doctors, whereas it needed 30 Doctors at least, to manage the health needs of the people.
Glaringly, the hospital is seriously battling its core mission statement to “offer quality health care to all persons living in Ghana, and delivered by well-trained, highly motivated, and client-focused health professionals”, because seven Doctors positioned under this horrifying conditions cannot breakthrough to achieve this laudably stated mission of the facility.
It is against this backdrop that the Deputy Director, Diaspora Affairs at the Office of the Presidency, Nadia Adongo Musah, brought five Doctors specialist and nurses to the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital to correct persons with deformities in the region for free.
Previously, all such cases were sent to the southern part of the country for treatment and huge sums of money were spent on patients.
Dr. Kwame Obeng who is the leader of the Doctors called for drastic reforms to be made to Ghana’s healthcare system to prevent needless deaths.
He is of the view that access to healthcare in this present age should no longer be difficult because “Ghana is not a poor country anymore.”
Dr. Obeng advised that it is imperative for authorities to bring more awareness to health because “a lot of people do not care about their health, they care more about life after death.
This, he said is necessary because “these days, Ghanaians are not dying of infectious and communicable diseases anymore.
The same diseases that are killing the whites, According to him, are killing us because of the permeation of western culture into our system.”
Dr. Obeng underscored the need for the society to invest more on our health issues.
Most of the cases reported to the facility include congenital abnormalities such as cleft lips and palate, post-burns complications, trauma burns and overly enlarged stomach and breast.
Story by GBC’s Upper East Regional Correspondent Samuel Ayammah.
