GHANA —The Bank of Ghana has played an important role in acquiring and installing a catheterization (Cath) laboratory at the Korle Bu Teaching facility in Accra worth US$1 million.
This advanced Cath laboratory will be the most advanced in Ghana and will feature a big detector, Dyna CT and roadmap software, and a 3D workstation.
As a result, the facility will be the only hospital in the West African region capable of providing accurate and efficient minimally invasive endovascular treatments.
The CEO of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Opoku Ware Ampomah, said that this will greatly enhance the hospital’s capabilities to provide cardiac catheterization, stenting for various conditions, emergency treatment of strokes and thromboembolic phenomena, and other life-saving interventions.
By investing in such medical assets and equipment, Ghana can provide comprehensive care to its patients and attract and retain skilled medical professionals.
The hospital’s management has been working strategically to acquire, maintain, and improve the quality of its facilities through external partnerships.
During the launch, the Vice President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia, challenged hospitals and other medical facilities across the country to partner with the private sector to provide and maintain essential equipment to help facilities offer top-notch care to patients.
A catheterization laboratory is an examination room in a hospital or clinic with diagnostic imaging equipment used to visualize the arteries of the heart and treat any stenosis or abnormality found.
The Ghanaian government has made modernizing its public health sector a priority in the last six years.
This includes the recruitment of more than 100,000 health personnel and the restoration of nursing training allowances.
The resuscitation of the national ambulance service through the implementation of the one constituency, one ambulance policy, under which 307 well-equipped ambulances were procured is also notable.
According to a Ghana Medical Journal, 49% of medical students surveyed had intentions of migrating after school.
A leading cause of these is the lack of infrastructure to support their work, adequate medical tools, and facilities to promote their life-saving work.
Ghanaian health personnel intending to migrate will do so to gain experience, find better living conditions, upgrade professional skills, and for better remuneration.
Brain drain is one of the major contributors to the projected shortage of health workers in Africa by 2030, which is expected to reach a staggering 6.1 million, as per the findings of a cross-sectional study published in BMJ Global Health.
This trend has had severe negative impacts on the health workforce status in the WHO African Region. With fewer health workers, the provision of essential healthcare services to meet health-related development goals has been hampered.
This has also constrained accelerated progress towards universal healthcare coverage. The loss of skilled health professionals through migration to developed countries is a significant factor contributing to this trend.
It undermines the development of healthcare systems and prevents patients from accessing essential healthcare services, which is a fundamental right for all citizens.
The negative impacts of brain drain are felt across the continent, where a majority of countries face a critical shortage of health workers, making it difficult to achieve the
Officials have noted the potential of Ghana to become a desired medical tourism hotbed in West Africa.
With Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the Komfo Anokoye Referral in Kumase with their advanced medical tools and technologies as well as specialized physicians, Ghana could attract up to 10,000 medical tourists annually according to the Journal of History of Culture, Science, and medicine in 2022.
In 2021, the number of people seeking medical treatments abroad was estimated to be 14 million, and the medical tourism industry is now worth between US$50 million and US$70 million.
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