By Godfred A. Polkuu
Sandema (U/E), Sept. 15, GNA – Management and staff of the Sandema Hospital in the Builsa North Municipality of the Upper East Region have expressed gratitude to the Ghana Gas Company (GGC) for providing a power plant to the facility.
Prior to the installation of the 150 kilovolt-ampere power plant, the Hospital depended on an obsolete plant, which had outlived its usefulness.
The situation often plunged the hospital into darkness and brought health service delivery to a halt.
It eventually compelled management of the facility to procure rechargeable lamps for its wards owing to the frequent erratic power supply to the Municipality.
Management and staff of the facility upon sighting the plant on the hospital premises expressed happiness and appreciation to the donor and were hopeful that the new plant would solve the power challenges in the hospital.
Dr Emmanuel Opoku, the Acting Medical Superintendent of the Hospital, who expressed gratitude to the GGC and Madam Vida Akantariwen Anaab, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for the area, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sandema that the hospital was faced with several challenges.
“One of our major challenges was the power outages,” he noted, adding that the plant would be of great relief to them as the hospital had migrated onto the Lightwave Health Information Management System, a computerised system of health service delivery, which needed constant power supply.
Dr Opoku appealed to other corporate organisations, philanthropists, and Non-Governmental Organisations to support the hospital, which is a referral centre for the Municipality and beyond, to enable it to continue to deliver effective health care services to its large clientele.
The MCE for the area, Madam Anaab, after presenting the plant to management of the hospital on behalf of the GGC, told the GNA that the Company came to the aid of the hospital following her appeal to management of the Company for a plant.
She said the appeal was made at a ceremony in the Municipality to commission some boreholes constructed by the GGC, and Management of the Company took up the issue as its corporate social responsibility to support the Hospital.
Madam Anaab, also a retired Midwife, noted that the erratic power supply in the Municipality affected health service delivery in the hospital, and recalled that “We even lost a lady who was undergoing operation in theatre because of the power outages.
“Even after we installed the plant, within some few hours, there was power outage, and that was what the hospital used throughout, and in the night, there was the usual erratic power supply. So, the plant is of immense help to us,” the MCE said.
Some staff of the facility especially nurses and midwives also told the GNA that “This plant will solve our ‘dumsor’ problem finally. We thank Ghana Gas Company for this gesture, and the MCE for the initiative. Sandema Hospital will gradually get back its past glory.”
GNA