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A
Life-saving Gift
With funding
and technical support from the Population Council, the Ghana Health
Service established the Nkwanta Health Development Centre in 2001 to
improve access to health services in rural communities.
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Physician John Koku Awoonor-Williams
(foreground) attends
a celebration of the arrival of ambulance services and the
opening of a community health compound where a newly posted
nurse will live and work. These and other major elements of the
services in this village have been provided
by gifts to the Population Council.
Photo credit: James Phillips/Population Council |
A new
ambulance, now being used by the Centre, was purchased with a recent
gift to the Council of $2,500. The tractor-plus-trailer serves a region
in the Volta region of northern Ghana that is home to 187,000 people and
just one doctor. That physician, John Koku Awoonor-Williams (see related
story titled “High Honors in Pakistan and Ghana”), wrote in regard to
the gift:
Nkwanta is a remote rural area where
there are no paved roads and very limited means of communication. We
have used this donation to purchase a small tractor and a trailer that
serves as an emergency obstetric-care ambulance. Community health
officers . . . have been provided with two-way radios, thanks also a
donation to the Council, that connect them with a nurse coordinator in
Nkwanta Town. When emergencies arise we can dispatch the ambulance,
refer the case to Nkwanta, and pursue clinical interventions that may be
indicated. We have already used this capability to save a young mother’s
life and the life of her baby. Based on the number of obstetric
emergencies that are encountered in communities here, we expect that
using the ambulance will lead to the prevention of 40 maternal deaths
each year.
This and other contributions in support
of the Council’s work in Ghana make it possible for colleagues in the
Ghana Health Service to develop, test, and demonstrate practical,
low-cost models for providing such crucial services as sustainable
emergency obstetric care.(Return to issue contents)
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