In every society in the African Diaspora and the world at large, Electricity, a good road network, education, and Health are very paramount for development.
NAYOY ministries and medical outreach, traveled to a place in Ghana, that very few people in the country mostly Trans-Saharan traders have and would travel to.
The name is HAMILE, a town located on the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, in the Upper West region, Wa.
It is what many will call a border town. Growing up, I had heard so much about this town that I was forced to believe it is probably one of the nicest and well developed towns in Ghana.
It took us a little over 18hours to travel from Accra to Hamile. We went through towns like Jirapa, Nadowli, Nandom to get to Hamile.
One would be thinking that once it is a border town, the road network would be first class so that foreigners entering the country would know that Ghana has the best to offer. Unfortunately, a chunk of the roads after Jirapa and other small towns I cannot really mention, are untarred, dusty and bad till you get to Hamile and even to the border post itself.
Being a health outreach group, we visited the health facility there to see how well it was functioning. Thanks to God it was. But not to its full capacity because it is under resourced both in personnel and logistics. The facility is not only patronized by Ghanaians in the town but also by Burkina-be’s who live around the border and beyond.
The facility has an estimated 26 selfless personnel or more, who see to the daily running of the health center and proper delivery of health; made up of medical, administrative, paramedical and other auxiliary staff.
The only available physician assistant takes care of about 1000-1500 patients in a month assisted by 8 nurses and a midwife, one laboratory staff, among others.
In spite of the huge turn up in the health center, the facility has some pitfalls that make staff who are posted from the south to go and work there refuse to go. One of such major problem is accommodation for the staff.
The facility has some uncompleted quarters that were built as far as the Era of I.K. Acheampong which has been neglected and consumed by weed.
These quarters if renovated could be to some extent of solving the issues of accommodation and also go a very long way to improve the living conditions of the medical staff, as well as control the refusal of staff to work there when posted to the facility.
The facility has a Labour ward, an Out-Patient Department (OPD), a 10 bed capacity lying-in ward, Dispensary, reproductive and child health clinic, among others.
Facts gathered brought to bare that, lots of deliveries are made in the facility by a midwife and assisted by other nursing staff.
The ratio of deliveries by midwifery staff available is not proportional and it is same in all the other healthcare departments and this is so because the facility lacks the capacity to house enough medical staff eventhough there are abandoned bungalows that could be fixed to meet such purpose.
The only ambulance available to transfer patients and pregnant women in cases of birth complications and other medical emergencies to places like Nandom, Jirapa, Wa, has been faulty and packed for sometime now!! This makes it life threatening in case such emergencies arise.
Nayoy medical outreach upon finding out these problems made a Godly decision to help get people on board to help upgrade the standards of the facility for proper health care delivery since somethings cannot be left to our politicians in the country.
There is a spoilt and neglected generator that needs fixing, solar panels that need batteries to serve as alternative source of power for the smooth running of the health center.
The facility needs renovations and enough logistics ranging from medical supplies to means of transport to enhance proper healthcare delivery. Think of the people in such a deprived area, all they need is to access quality healthcare to make life better because the wealth of every land is its health.
We are therefore calling on corporate institutions, individuals, churches, organizations etc, to help in fixing the above mentioned hardships encountered by the facility. Help could range from accommodation, to medical supplies, vans and most importantly motorbikes to help health personnel reach people in the interior since the use of motorbikes is the major means of transport within Hamile and its environs.