By Florence Afriyie Mensah
Kumasi, May 24, GNA – Management of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi is in talks with the Ghana Health Service to change the Hydrotherapy Unit of the facility into a limb fitting centre.
The Hydrotherapy Unit, part of the Physiotherapy Centre, is not in use due to the low return on investment.
Professor Otchere Addai-Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of KATH, who made this known, said the conversion of the unit into a limb fitting centre would help the teaching hospital render quality services in amputation and prosthetic limbs to clients.
“It is going to cost about $150, 000 to fix it and the return on investment is low.
So, what we are intending to do with the space is to change the architecture so that it can now be used as a limb fitting center, which is in a bad state,” he told journalists after the hospital’s Board members inspected some on-going projects and activities on Friday.
The facilities inspected were the hostel for patients’ relatives, refurbished Physiotherapy Center and installation of some new dialysis machines.
Prof. Addai-Mensah said the physiotherapy centre, which was in a bad state, was renovated and refurbished by management through part of the hospital’s internally generated funds.
On the construction of the patients’ relatives’ hostel, he said it was about 80 percent complete with doors, tiling, beds and windows all fixed.
He expressed optimism that the 190-bed capacity edifice would be completed by the end of the year to reduce the littering of patients’ relatives on the hospital’s compound.
At the dialysis center, he said management was expecting to install 12 functional machines by the end of May 2024.
Prof. Addai-Mensah pointed out that the new Minister for Health, Dr. Bernard Okoe-Boye, was intent on ensuring that health facilities were equipped with dialysis machines.
He said a meeting with all CEOs of teaching Hospitals had been held with the Minister to ensure that some more machines for dialysis were procured for teaching hospitals, including KATH to advance healthcare.
GNA