By Samuel Ofori Boateng
Agroyesum (Ash), April 05, GNA – Authorities of the St. Martin’s Catholic hospital at Agroyesum in the Amansie South District have called for support from individuals and organizations to help procure incubators to save the lives of pre-term babies at the facility.
Lack of incubators had resulted in the death of many pre-mature babies delivered at the facility or referred to the facility in recent times.
The hospital, which serves as the only referral facility for the Amansie West and South districts had in recent times seen many pregnant women going into labour pre-maturely, but lack of incubators made it impossible to save the lives of the babies.
The Reverend Sister Mary Assumptal Taabuzuing, a Senior Nurse Manager at the hospital, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that, two babies had within the period of three days, died due to the lack of incubators to help save their lives.
She said since the hospital was a referral facility, a lot of pre-term cases were referred to the facility, but there was not a single incubator and that made it difficult for the doctors and nurses to save the lives of the babies.
Rev. Sister Taabuzuing said the hospital, located in one of the most deprived communities in the country, needed a lot of resources to be able to deliver quality healthcare to the people who were mostly farmers and miners.
The facility is noted for the treatment and management of buruli ulcer in the country and had been the leading health facility in an area which had the worse road network in the Ashanti region.
The prevalence of illegal mining activities, which had resulted in the contamination of water bodies and many infections in the area, placed enormous responsibility on the facility to provide quality healthcare to the people.
However, the lack of adequate infrastructure and coordination was making it difficult for the facility to provide the needed services.
Rev. Sister Taabuzuing said the facility needed the support of the Government, philanthropic organizations, and individuals to assist in providing infrastructure, adequate coordination, and consumables to ensure smooth operations.
GNA