Upper West Health Directorate supported with 8 tricycle ambulances

Community Development Alliance (CDA), a non-governmental organisation based in the Upper West Region, has presented eight community tricycle ambulances to the Upper West Regional Directorate of Health to support the primary health care delivery system in the region.

The tricycles are to be distributed to eight communities in three districts to provide emergency health transportation services to communities that need it most.

The ambulances are fitted with a stretcher, a bench that can accommodate at least two people, a fan to provide ventilation, an oxygen bottle and a box for first aid supplies.

The beneficiary districts are Lambussie, Daffiama-Bussie-Issa (DBI) and Wa East. The beneficiary communities have already been identified in consultation with the district health directorates, using their needs and accessibility.

Presentation

The Chief Executive Director of CDA, Kanton Salifu Issifu, said the ambulances were procured through a grant from the Grand Challenge Canada under its Innovate for Health Project which “seeks to complement the efforts of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in improving emergency health care for mothers, pregnant women and newborns living in under-served communities.”

The tricycle ambulances

Under the project, he said the CDA, which focuses on sustainable, inclusive and resilient community development, is supporting 12 communities. Eight of the communities are in the Upper West Region and four are in the Savannah Region.

As part of the project, the organisation would also train community members in management and administration, who would administer emergency health transportation services to their own community members as volunteers.

He said CDA, in partnership with the National Ambulance Service, was training the riders who would provide the transportation services.

Wrong impression

He explained that contrary to the rumours circulating on social media, the tricycles were not procured by the government and were not a government-sponsored project, but rather a grant from the Stars in Global Health Grand Challenge, Canada, to assist in the provision of emergency transportation to underserved communities.

He said when the ambulances were being delivered by the vendor, some people took videos of them and circulated them on social media, giving it a political twist.

“There is no comparison of this to the Ghana Ambulance Service. These are community ambulances designed to address a gap,” he explained.

On behalf of the Director of GHS, the Upper West Regional Director of Health, Dr Damien Punguyire, expressed the service’s gratitude to CDA for the innovation to address a critical need within the service.

He said some of the communities become inaccessible, particularly during the rainy season, and believed that the provision of the community ambulance would be very useful when there was a need to refer a patient to a bigger health facility.

He also explained that the community ambulance would not replace the services of the National Ambulance Service but complement them. However, he hoped that with time, more communities would be hooked onto the initiative.

Management

Dr Punguyire appealed to the members of the beneficiary communities to help in the management of the ambulance by ensuring that they were used for the intended purpose and not used to cart charcoal or ordinary passengers.

“Let’s watch over them. Let’s take care of them to ensure that they last, because the solutions they are going to bring is something that national ambulances would not be able to address,” he appealed.

He said when successful, the initiative would be rolled nationwide, “especially in communities that are hard to reach, so that it would go a long way to improve the health delivery system in our country.”