Ga West Presbytery, GCGL organise blood donation
The Ga West Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, in partnership with the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), has organised a blood donation exercise in Accra to support the blood bank of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge Hospital).
The exercise, which took place simultaneously across the Adabraka Official Town, Kwashieman and Gbawe districts of the church, saw more than 300 congregants donating blood.
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The cause was ably supported by the GCGL with the donation of assorted drinks, packs of bottled water, as well souvenirs to the church.
The undertaking was one of the many activities marking the fifth anniversary of the Ga West Presbytery.
The Chairperson of the Ga West Presbytery, Rev. Daniel Nyarko, said the gesture was a direction from God, which the church believed was another way of saving lives as a religious entity.
“We hear that these days, the hospitals and the blood banks are running out of blood and people are losing their lives. Therefore, as our religious responsibility, we have appealed to members to freely donate blood, so that those who need blood when they go to hospital will receive attention as expected,” he said.
He urged all Ghanaians, especially the youth, to organise themselves and donate blood to hospitals, “or they can walk straight to the blood banks at the various hospitals, so that they can donate just to save lives and ensure that we all live happily in our nation”.
Crisis
A medical officer at the Ridge Hospital, Dr Emmanuel Addipa-Adapoe, indicated that voluntary blood donors were no longer donating blood to hospitals because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said as a result, hospitals were in crisis, as they needed blood to save lives.
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“Go to the hospitals and see for yourselves pregnant women with COVID-19 who must have caesarean sessions. Relatives may not be allowed to visit them and if they do not have some people to donate blood for them, you can imagine what will happen,” he said.
He expressed the hope that the exercise would shore up the number of units that the hospital had in its blood bank, adding that “this is going to save a lot of lives”.
Excitement
“You have no idea how excited I am at the response. It is so massive and I am overwhelmed because it is beyond our expectation the number of people who have come to donate blood to support the Greater Accra Regional Hospital,” Dr Addipa-Adapoe, who is a member of the hospital’s COVID-19 case management team, said.
He thanked the church for the gesture, saying: “What this presbytery has done is something worth emulating by corporate organisations, philanthropists and individuals who feel like giving pints of blood.”
Partnership
The Communications Officer of the GCGL, Mrs Kyerewaa Asiamah Wiafe, said the company accepted to partner the church because it believed in the health of society.
“The Ga West Presbytery appealed to the GCGL that they wanted us to support their blood donation exercise and we thought it was needful to do that because saving the lives of people would also increase productivity.
“You can't buy blood; when somebody needs blood, you can't get blood anywhere to buy, and so if we stock all our blood banks, we'll have a healthy nation. We're calling on all corporate bodies to assist in this project. When we all go out to donate blood, I believe we will all live as a healthy nation,” she said.