By Erica Apeatua Addo
Subri (W/R), Nov 4, GNA – Hypertension and diabetes have been identified as the most common health conditions being suffered by some residents of Subri in the Wassa East District of the Western Region.
This was revealed during a health sensitization and screening programme organized by the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation (GFGF) in partnership with the Rotary clubs of Tarkwa, Takoradi-Anaji and Bogoso.
The exercise, benefitted over 700 residents within Gold Fields operational area, and they were screened for various health conditions such as hypertension, diabetics, skin disease, malaria, breast cancer, and eye problem among others, after which the relevant medications were given to them for free.
Dr. Magdalene Bakari, Unit Manager for Health Services at Gold Fields Ghana earlier educated the public on the chronic illnesses and breast cancer.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency after the exercise, Dr Bakari said, “We have had quite a number of our ladies going in for the screening and we are impressed with the conduct of the people here. It’s been quite orderly, and people seem to be really interested in what is going on here.”
She said although they created more awareness on breast cancer during the month of October that should not be the only time they needed to get screened for the illness.
She, therefore, appealed to women to do their own self breast examination every month after their menstrual cycle to make sure they picked up anything before it grows as that could be easily managed.
Touching on the chronic diseases, Dr Bakari explained that “ It’s so unfortunately, we still have some difficulty in getting people to even accept the condition in the first place. That’s why we keep creating the awareness whenever we get the opportunity, and we will still continue.”
“Another thing has to do with our local medication sellers. I mean, you have adverts that make it clear that the medications that we give are not helping them, and then they offer all sorts of alternatives. So this is really going against any strides that we are actually making.”
She advised every one to have a regular checkup, saying “if you are on medications, comply with your doctor’s directions and seek help if you need it.”
The unit manager for health services noted that with the children, the pediatrician who attended to them explained that they were having low blood levels, adding “we are having discussions about how to further increase the scope of our activities for our next outreach so that we can have test to know their blood levels”.
Mr Abdul Razak Yakubu, Executive Secretary of the GFGF, said globally Gold Fields had come up with the group legacy programme, which aimed to ensure that the company leave a legacy in the areas where they operated even after mining in Ghana.
He said upon research they had decided to leave a legacy of a good and healthy community, adding “So we call ours the expanded access to quality health care and it includes a lot of components. The major one is the construction of an accident and emergency centre at the Apinto Government Hospital”.
In addition, Mr Yakubu said the Mine wanted to make health care accessible to people in its communities, so they visited them on quarterly basis and offered free healthcare services.
“Our target is to screen about 700 people for the medical outreach programme, and another 700 for breast cancer. The foundation invested over GH¢220,000. 00 in the programme. ”
He expressed gratitude to members of the Rotary Clubs of Tarkwa, Bogoso and Takoradi-Anaji, for assisting to make the programme successful.
Nathaniel Northa, Rotary President of Tarkwa, emphasized that the screening was an annual programme and for the past five years Rotary Club had collaborated with GFGF to get it done.
“In fact, GFGF has done so well to support this initiative over the years. For this quarter we brought a whole pharmacy and hospital to give the people of Subri better health care. We know they are underserved, and having access to quality healthcare is so difficult, so we took this upon ourselves to get this done,” he stated
Dede Hamidu, President of the Rotary Club of Tarkoradi-Anaji, on her part, said in the month of October they created awareness on breast cancer but this year they did not concentrate on only women alone, because breast cancer affected a percentage of men as well.
She commended members of the community for the prompt response to the health screening exercise.
GNA