By Philip Tengzu
Duong, (UW/R), Jan. 01, GNA – The Duong Youth Development Association (DYDA) has handed over an ultra-modern health facility to the Catholic Health Service Trust (CHST) to enhance provision of timely and quality health care services to the people in Duong and surrounding communities.
The facility, which shared premises with the Duong Bone Centre, a fracture treatment centre at the Duong community, would also serve as a referral point for patients at the centre who needed medical care including suturing and wound dressing.
The new facility christened; “St. Anne Medical Centre” is an initiative of the Duong community with funding support from two Non-governmental Organisations in the Netherlands, the Equal Opportunity Fund, and the Wild Geese Foundation.
The first phase of the facility, which cost about GH¢2.4 million, was completed in 2021 and had since been operational, providing quality care to the people in the area.
It consisted of an Out-Patient Department (OPD), an administration block, three wards with 39-beds (13 beds each for the children, males, and females’ wards), consulting rooms, a laboratory, a theatre, a maternity unit, a pharmacy, and a mechanised water system.
Addressing the people at a ceremony at Duong at the weekend to hand over the facility, Professor Robert Yennah, the Chairman of DYDA, said plans were far advanced for the commencement of the second phase of the project, which consisted of the construction of residential facilities for the staff.
While expressing delight about the potential benefit of the facility to the people in Duong and its enclave and Ghana as a whole, the Association’s Chairman urged the CHST to jealously manage the facility to live its mandate.
“I urge the Catholic Health Service Trust to transform the St. Anne Medical Centre to a world class health facility where traditional and orthodox medical practitioners collaborate and cooperate to provide quality services that meet the needs of the people it serves,” Prof. Yennah said.
The Reverend Sister Juliana Lamisi Akayeti, the Executive Director of CHST, Wa, commended the community for constructing the facility and expressed hope that the management of the facility would continue to enjoy the community’s support in running the facility.
She announced that Dr. George Omale, a medical doctor, would assume post at the facility in 2024 to further improve the services delivered at that facility.
Mr David Edu Mensah, a Physician Assistant (PA) in Charge of the facility, indicated that low attendance was one of the challenges the facility was faced with in its quest to reach hospital status.
He explained that the lowest recorded attendance at the facility was in April 2022 with 53 attendances and the highest was in October 2021 with 201 attendances and encouraged the people to visit the facility anytime they were sick rather than do self-medication.
“It is the vision of the pioneers as well as management that in some few years to come the facility becomes a hospital and the numbers are imperative to that effect,” Mr Mensah said.
Madam Phoebe Balagumyetime, the Nadowli-Kaleo District Health Director, said increasing access and equity in healthcare delivery in the district had been their major concern and that the St. Anne Medical Centre had come at the right time.
“We are all marching towards universal health coverage by 2030 and I know Duong is one of the communities that will contribute towards our achieving universal health coverage because of what you have done”, she eulogized.
She added that the construction of the facility was an indication that they were capable of solving their community challenges without waiting for the government which was laudable.
GNA