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HEALTH

TECHIMAN: Latter Day Saints supports 4 CHIPs compounds with medical equipment

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) based in Washington DC of the USA which has three Congregations in Ghana has donated medical equipment worth GH¢90,000.00 to Techiman Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Services (GHS) in the Brong Ahafo Region to support the operation of FOUR (4) Community based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds.

Date Created : 11/13/2017 1:02:20 AM : Story Author : Anass Sabit

The donation was part of LDS Charities, the humanitarian arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to provide improved maternity and general health care services for inhabitants in their local communities. An estimated 16,000 inhabitants were said to benefit from the service delivery as well as ensure that no citizen travels beyond 5km to access health care.

The equipment includes hospital beds, delivering beds, fridges, weighing scales for adults and children, examination couches, patients’ trolleys among others.

Elder Charles Redlin, Africa West area representative of the Church in Techiman said the donation was part of their welfare service delivery to humankind. He also encouraged the chiefs as well as the community members to make good use of the facility.

Dr. Damien Punguyire, the Municipal Health Director for Techiman in his address commended the Church for the donation to save lives. He said the donation was necessary because years after the CHPS Compound was constructed, they remained either unused not because of lack of qualify staff or lack of need for their use but due to unavailability of basic equipment’s required to use to operate them.

The health Director gave assurance that the donation will be put into good use to benefit over 16,000 habitants in the communities. “We are committed to our part of the MOU to ensure that there will be no unsupervised birth in the communities, Antenatal attendance will increase and ultimately maternal and infants mortality will decline”, he said.

He noted that, it was the policy of the government of Ghana to ensure that no citizen travels beyond 5km to access health care in this country. He added that, the objective of this policy was to ensure geographic access to quality health for all the people living in Ghana.

He said the strategy used in achieving this universal access, particularly in rural communities in the country has been the implementation of the Community based Health Planning Services (CHPS) concept where a cadre of staff was sent to line with communities and to serve their health needs.

He observed that these facilities were almost exclusively located in the capital city of Techiman which leaves the rural part of the Municipality not adequately served and also such result of maldistribution of health infrastructure has a high number of avoidable deaths in these rural areas. He noted if the CHPS compounds were put to use could address this critical challenge.