The School of Peri-Operative and Critical Care Nursing at the Korle-Bu Teaching hospital has as a part of its 20th-anniversary celebration, organised a free medical health screening for the people of Glefe in Accra.
The exercise which was one of many activities being organised by the school was to create health awareness and also help members of the community with their health status.
Beneficiaries of the exercise were screened for hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, eye problem, stroke, obesity, malaria among others and offered free medication as well as education on family planning and the importance of living healthy.
Nearly 500 people from the community and its environs, including executives of the Glefe GPRTU of TUC, were present to have themselves screened for various ailments.
The program was made possible through the collaborative effort of the Assemblyman and opinion leaders of the area.
Dr Kweku Asante Krobea, the principal of School of Peri-Operative and Critical Care Nursing said the school decided on Glefe for the health screening due to how densely populated the area is and the need to educate the community on how to avoid diseases.
According to him, the school is concerned with the less privileged in the society, hence organising the free health screening was to encourage a culture of health awareness among the people.
He said the role of a critical care and peri-operative nurse in the health delivery system is so critical to the society and cannot be ignored, although they are not directly seen with patients but are needed in the case of surgery, mostly found in the intensive care unit of various hospitals.
“It is the classic demonstration of what we stand for that we will produce critical healthcare professionals that will stand in the gap we have in our health delivering care system we have in Ghana, it is true that the professionals that we are producing are not responsible, directly to the health needs of the communities because, he’s supposed to be responsible to health needs of a patient coming to the hospital whose condition will require surgery”
Dr Asante Krobea reiterated the need to train more critical care and peri-operative nurses by calling on the government to help expand the school’s infrastructure in order to accommodate more students since it is the only school that trains critical care and peri-operative nurses.
“Patients are safer with a well trained peri-operative and critical nurse, we have travelled a very hard road, since we came into existence as Peri-Operative and Critical Care Nursing institution and we didn’t have a school of our own, we were operating on borrowed place and we didn’t have a budget on our own so we were living on the meagre money that the ministry was giving to us and it still not the best.
“The place needs expansion, we need to expand the place, we need government to offer grant and support from the consolidated fund for us to get what we want, most importantly expanding our infrastructure and also procurement of capital equipment so that it will be easier for us to move on”
He said the school believes that when people are healthy, they could engage in economic activities to meaningfully contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.
Some of the beneficiaries of the exercise, who spoke to the Starr News, expressed gratitude to the school and its management for the gesture and urged them to continue support deprived communities with their kind gesture.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Alex Semordzi