By Florence Afriyie Mensah, GNA
Kumasi, Dec. 20, GNA - The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has donated a $220,000 mobile health clinic van to facilitate medical outreach for Ghanaians.
The mobile clinic is equipped with an ultrasound machine and printer, an echocardiogram machine, two examination beds, three consulting rooms, air conditioners, a refrigerator for vaccines, a generator, and power system, among others.
The HopeXchange Medical Center in Kumasi will manage and operate the clinic and provide specialized medical screenings to communities in the Ashanti Region and beyond.
Dr. Zohra Balsara, USAID/Ghana Health Office Director, at a handing over ceremony in Kumasi, said the mobile clinic van would ensure that preventive, promotive and curative health services be brought to the doorsteps of those who were unable to travel to Kumasi to access medical needs.
She believed that HopeXchange’s outreach team of clinicians would provide services across the Ashanti Region, the Bono East Region and even as far as the Afram Plains in the Eastern Region.
Dr Balsara hoped the hospital’s close collaboration with district health teams, would generate demand and mobilize communities to attend medical screenings for hypertension, diabetes, hepatitis, eye, breast, cervix, and sexually transmitted infections – emphasizing prevention and promotion – a very important component of primary health care.
According to her, since 2013, USAID had provided $3.5 million to HopeXchange to among other things, establish and equip its pathology laboratory for the Women’s Cancer Center, support clinical and research programmes, and construct a maternal-child health center with a labour and delivery suite, neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, and an adolescent clinic.
In the past year, USAID has provided over $150 million to support health, economic growth and agriculture, education, governance, and security.
Approximately $30 million of this funding is dedicated to maternal and child health, nutrition and family planning, she disclosed.
Mr Dominic Osei-Kofi, General Manager, HopeXchange Medical Center, said routine community outreaches by the facility had yielded positive results, adding that, it would expand and intensify to reach underserved and remote communities with the coming into being of the mobile clinic van.
He said in the last year (October 2023 – September 2024), the outreach team served some 12,517 people across 63 communities in the Ashanti and Bono East Regions.
The General Manager assured to maintain the van for its optimum use.
GNA