KATH ready for emergencies
Following the May 9, 2001 Accra Sports Stadium disaster where 127 football fans lost their lives, the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has become the country’s main hope and the sub-regional reference point in combating any such eventualities.
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The Disaster has become the main driving force in initiating a Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) with its operative centre at the KATH.
It is a partnership among the KATH, the Michigan University, KNUST, the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Services, the National Ambulance Service and the National AIDS Control Programme to tackle the incident.
Five years after the collaborative effort, Ghana appeared to be benefiting from the project as 15 specialist emergency physicians have been trained, as well as 15 medical officers, 35 emergency nurses and a number of trained medical students and emergency technicians to man the country’s major facilities.
KATH, which is the main hub and the centre, for train-the-trainers in the country, has helped to set up a full team to handle such emergencies at the Tamale Teaching and the Tema General hospitals.
Currently, four doctors from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital are being trained by the lead clinician at KATH and a Special Emergency Physician at the University of Michigan, Dr Rocketfeller Oteng, to set up such a unit at the facility in Accra.
To demonstrate how ready Ghana was in dealing with such crisis, the KATH specialised team played a role in resuscitating and saving the lives of the trapped victims rescued by the Israelis team during the Melcom Disaster.
The five-year project, which has just ended, was funded by PEPFAR and the National Institutes of Health under the US president’s initiative to strengthen medical application across Africa and to increase human resource in combating HIV/AIDS in particular.
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The plan was also to train more workers in the health sector and to research into relevant issues affecting communities.
Dr Oteng said it was to increase the capacity for the provision of emergency medical care in Ghana through innovation and sustainable, physician, nursing and medical student training programmes.