Health News of Tuesday, 16 August 2011

Source: GNA

250KV generator for La General Hospital

Accra, Aug. 16, GNA – Power outages at the La General Hospital will now be a thing of the past following the presentation of a 250KV Prime Power Generator donated by the Member of Parliament for La Dadekotopon, Nii Amasah Namoale.

The MP, who is also a Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in Charge of Fisheries, made the donation on Tuesday to save the hospital from the frequent difficulties it goes through in handling critical cases such as surgery and deliveries, whenever there was power outage.

Nii Namoale provided GH¢72,056.38 as the cost of 200KV of the generator while Global Power Energy, a locally based energy company that supplied the facility, bore the cost of the additional 50KV as its social responsibility to the hospital.

The capacity of the generator can power the whole hospital when there is a power outage.

The MP said the hospital old generator had always broken down and therefore felt the need for its replacement in order to save the lives of thousands of patients that visited the facility.

He said politicians were put in office to meet the needs of people in society.

“If people are dying in our hospitals today because of electricity (power) then as politicians we should all bow down our heads in shame,” he said and asked why politicians should be in office when people who placed them there could not see improvement in their lives.

Having witnessed a power outage at the La General Hospital, the Chief Executive of the Accra metropolitan Assembly, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, said he was glad that the electricity problem was now over and hoped the facility would be properly managed.

He said the proposal to supply the generator came to him from the MP and he willingly supported it, adding “I will never be a stumbling block to the Better Ghana Agenda.”

Mr Vanderpuije said conditions in the public health facilities in the metropolis needed to be improved to make the delivery of health care more accessible to Ghanaians.

Welcoming officials for the handling-over of the generator, Dr Juliana Ameh, a Specialist Pediatrician at the hospital, noted that La General Hospital’s chronic headache, which was unreliable power supply, had just been cured with the new facility.

“It has been a challenge in this hospital with our electricity condition, especially during operation,” she said and added that patients were in the wards and mothers had come to deliver whilst laboratory staff needed power to carry out quick tests.