By Bajin D. Pobia
Wa, Feb. 16, GNA – The Corporate Social Investment wing of MTN Ghana in partnership with three hospitals in the Upper West Region have organised mobile voluntary blood donation exercise to provide 260 pints of safe blood for the facilities.
The Foundation, for the past years, have provided communal services with the provision of safe blood to health facilities to help improve health care delivery, particularly to pregnant women, children and accident victims to save their lives.
Hitherto, patients had died because blood was not available.
This year’s exercise was organised at St. Francis Girls Senior High School, Wa Senior High School and the Zongo Youth Camp for voluntary donors to provide 260 pints of safe blood for the Upper West Regional Hospital, the Wa Municipal Hospital and the Saint Joseph Hospital in the Jirapa Municipality to help replenish their blood banks.
Mr Seth Owusu Nyamekye, the Upper West Regional Manager of MTN who coordinated the exercise in Wa, described the Foundation’s “The Save a Life Project,” as an “exclusive event” by the foundation in a response to a request by the National Blood Bank to restock blood banks across the country by establishing an annual blood donation exercise.
He said health was one of the three focus areas of the Foundation and as a result, it had committed resources to providing access to health care delivery as an intervention towards improving the lives of Ghanaians.
He said human capital was essential to the development of the country, expressing the regret that each year, thousands of lives were being lost because of shortage of blood in the various blood banks.
“Mass blood donation exercises have proven to be very successful in responding to this very critical issue in health care delivery and as a corporate body, which cares for the people in the communities, we decided to commit our resources to this worthy course,” he added.
Mr Nyamekye appealed to Ghanaians to use the day to demonstrate their love by coming out to the various centres to donate to stock the blood banks in health facilities in the region to save more lives.
Mr Alhassan Abdul-Nasir, the Laboratory Manager of the regional hospital, said blood was medicine, which needed to be provided and made readily available to a patient who needed it to survive, especially with those who got involved in accidents and pregnant women who come to the facilities to deliver.
“Blood must always be made available and accessible to patients at the right time to stay alive. The non -availability of the product could lead to the death of a patient at a great loss to Ghana,” he said.
He expressed disappointment that some people come to the hospital purposely to donate for their relatives alone, a practice he said must change for the interest of the larger society and not for individual interest.
“We must learn to donate blood to save lives especially for those who needed it and are also needy. Donation of blood is everybody’s business so that the product could be available to patients at the right times,” he said.
He lauded the MTN Foundation’s efforts saying corporate Bodies such as MTN partnership was very appreciative and appealed to agencies and workplace groups, corporate organisations to feel free to come to the aid of the health facilities to organise such exercises to replenish the blood banks.
Mr Abdul-Nasir, appealed to youth groups in the communities to organise blood donation centres to support the hospitals’ blood banks with blood at all times.
GNA