Hospital kitchen project makes good progress
Dogs on the ward and a herd of goats grazing outside the window are a common sight at the neglected Nandom Hospital in northern Ghana. Patients lie on the floor where it is cooler than the bare beds, looking up at the ceiling riddled with rot, covered by rafters infested with mice.
Built more than forty years ago the hospital, which serves a population of up to one million people, has had barely no investments, few repairs and has just three doctors to tend to 171 beds.
The expansive site is filled with families cooking, washing, and cleaning on the ground, so they are able to take relatives on the ward, food and clean clothes.
Many of them remain outside for several days or weeks, sleeping on the ground amongst the chickens and urinating in the bushes, before making the long walk home once their relative has recovered or died.
In the maternity ward, pregnant women who are having problems are left on trolleys lying in the corridors whilst the new mothers crowd together in one room.
The main surgical ward has been branded "not fit for animals" by the hospital's new, eccentric neurosurgeon, a Bulgarian doctor who is performing miracles with the most basic of instruments.
He has moved his post operative patients to the children's ward because he believes it is the only safe environment in the hospital, where they will not be killed off by infection.
FREED UK, a Northampton charity which is supporting Nandom Hospital, has already trained 12 nurses and shipped over equipment in an attempt to raise standards.
During their latest visit a kitchen project was started with the help of hundreds of people from the community who volunteered their time to make bricks and prepare the foundations.
There is currently no kitchen on site and many children and adults die following successful operations due to starvation or malnutrition. Through a Chronicle & Echo appeal 4,000 has been raised to build the main kitchen structure. A further 3,000 needs to be raised to pay for the roof and installation of equipment inside.
Once the kitchen is complete the site will be designated a 'feeding hospital' meaning it will receive additional Government funding.
Future sustainable projects planned by FREED UK are to then provide a cool storage area and provide the farms with water and electricity so they are able to sell food to the hospital.
Andrew Camilleri, a former trainee surgeon at Northampton General Hospital, who now works as an oral and maxillofacial consultant in Hertfordshire, has been a financial supporter of FREED UK since its began and has been to Nandom twice before.
He said: "This time we have started to finally achieve something. The first time we gave sheets to the hospital and looked around. The second time we got a better idea of what they needed and how to do it and in the last year it has all started happening. The kitchen has started and we are making rapid progress."
The building of the kitchen caused such a stir amongst the local community that the sub chief of the nearby town of Batanyn, Bartholomew Debpuur came to see the progress for himself and speak about it on FREED radio.
He said: "It is once in a lifetime that we have some people from abroad coming to help improve living standards. I am very humbled by the project. It was not a big problem to get people to come and help when they heard strangers from another country were coming."
The kitchen will mean that people being treated for serious illnesses at Nandom Hospital will have a better chance of recovery.
More than 40 per cent of people at the hospital are being treated for malaria and other common illnesses are throat and stomach infections, hernias, HIV and thyroid problems.
Dr Robert Amesiya, is the only Ghanaian doctor at the hospital, supported by two foreign doctors and two medical assistants.
He said the kitchen will have a dramatic impact and added: "Malnutrition in this part of the county is very high. The roads are not very accessible and it is not easy for people to get food and bring it to the hospital. If we are a feeding hospital more people will come and it will really help our economics."
Meanwhile neurosurgeon Nikolay Moynov is building a reputation in the region which in turn is creating more revenue for the hospital as patients come from hundreds of miles away to see him.
They are even travelling across the border from Burkino Faso, because his services are cheaper than in their own country.
Health care in Ghana is paid for through an insurance scheme, whereby patients pay a small annual fee.This entitles them to free treatment and each time the hospital sees a patient, they are reimbursed by the Government. Therefore the more complex operations a hospital carries out, the greater the funding they are given which can then be put back into buying equipment and repairing buildings.
Dr Nikolay said if he had the right equipment he would be able to treat up to 40 patients a month instead of the current five to ten and pay for the rebuilding of the surgical ward he has labelled out of bounds.
He is in desperate need of a bipolar machine which stops blood flow without damaging the surrounding nerves, a surgical drill and small plates and screws- which would cost a total of around 40,000.
Many of the patients need surgery on their spinal cord because it has been depressed through carrying large weights on their heads.
Dr Moynov added: "In my country this is very rare. They also have a lot of brain abscesses here. They don't go to the doctor if they have an infection in the middle ear or sinus and it develops into an abscess. But I can't operate on a brain tumour without a bipolar machine as it will kill a patient."
Anne Hicks, a clinical nurse specialist at Northampton General Hospital, an original member of FREED UK, said Dr Moynov had been a great boost to the community.
During FREED UK's visit to Nandom Hospital in October Dr Moynov treated a 17-year-old who had been paralysed from the waist down following a road accident.
Following surgery he had movement in all of his limbs and the doctor was confident he would be able to walk again in a matter of months.
Ms Hicks said: "Is it nothing short of a miracle. Without the surgery he would have died or been in a wheelchair if he family could look after him."
But she was shocked by some of the other practices at the hospital. Whilst visiting the pathology laboratory she witnessed a 19-year-old come in to donate blood. The blood was then tested for hepatitis B and C, and for HIV.
Ms Hicks continued: "This patient had HIV but it is hospital policy not to tell the patient. So they were just told they couldn't give blood and then they left. So there is a 19-year-old in the community that doesn't know they have HIV and the hospital does."
CREATING revenue for Nandom Hospital is a crucial part of its development and thanks to a 40 ft container of medical supplies from the UK this is now starting to happen.
Jacobs Well, a Christian charity based in Hull, which supplies medical relief to Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, worked in conjunction with Northampton organisation FREED UK to transport the goods 3,000 miles to Ghana.
The huge unit contained boxes of drugs, medical equipment, anaesthetic machines and clothes. Previously the hospital only had one anaesthetic machine, meaning if it broke down they were unable to operate.
During their week in Nandom Peter and Beryl Beynon, the founders of Jacobs Well, distributed items to different wards in the hospital, with Margaret Wells, a executive member of their charity.
They also helped to set up a coherent pharmacy which will start to generate money for the hospital.
Working with them was Anne Hicks, a clinical nurse specialist from Northampton General Hospital.
She explained: "When the hospital prescribes drugs to a patient from their pharmacy the Government pays back the hospital for the drugs. So if they use our drugs, which have cost them nothing, the money from the Government will be profit and the money can be put back into other areas of the hospital like the kitchen project."
Mrs Beynon explained that they had expanded into Africa because they had difficulty taking aid to other parts of the world due to politics and they had warehouses full of goods sitting unused.
She added: "We started in Poland but when it became part of the EU the aid was deducted from the hospitals income."
Her husband continued: "We also had a lot of problems getting into Afghanistan due to the British and Americans tying our hands and the attitude of 'trade not aid.'
"The Americans draw up a list of drugs they want people to use so they can sell them and they block everything else. They have stopped our containers and held them for a year."
The connection with FREED UK was made when they were approached by a Ghanaian maths teacher in Hull who was asking for bicycles to be sent to his home country. They were then put in touch with Dominic Hooko who is friends with Dery Tuopar the Northampton dental surgeon who founded FREED UK.
Mrs Wells, a retired swimming coach who now works as a reader, joined the Wells to help distribute the goods. The born again Christian said since her husband died in 2000, the lord had led her to Africa.
She added: "The peace and gentleness of the people moved me as soon as I stepped off the plane. Though they have got nothing there is no animosity towards us.
"I believe we should be supporting this area for a long time. I know we shall be back."
Dr Robert Amesiya, a GP working at Nandom Hospital said some of the medical equipment sent by Jacobs Wells they have never had before.
He added: "It is lovely to get the autoclaves (sterilising machines) as it will help with infection prevention. The equipment will make our work better and more things accessible to patients."
www.thejacobswell.org
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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