It turned into an emotional exercise when Surfline, Ghana’s first 4G LTE network, visited the paediatric and maternity wards of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the Tema General Hospital on last Tuesday to settle the indebtedness of 27 patients to the two medical facilities.

The donation was made possible through a social media (Facebook) campaign launched by Surfline a few weeks ago. During the period, the operator donated GHs1.00 to a special fund for every “Like” of its Facebook page and this yielded an amount of GHs 19,514.00.

The exercise, an extension of the Surfline End of Year SURFprise promotion, saw Surfline donating a total of GHs 25,771.00. Out of this amount, GHs 3,526.00 went to the Tema General Hospital to absorb the bills of six patients while the remaining GHs 22, 245.00 settled the bills of 21 patients at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.

In order not to exclude any of the 27 patients nominated by the hospitals to benefit from the intervention, Surfline topped up the amount raised (GHs 19,514.00) with GHs 6,257.00.

Marketing Director of Surfline, Rosy Fynn said: “We are just happy, that between ourselves and our Facebook fans, we have been able to reunite these patients with their loved ones this festive season”. Some patients could not hold back their tears talking to the Surfline team in their respective wards.

“It would sound strange to you that since I was admitted over a month ago, not even a single relative came to see how I am faring, let alone offer me any help to financially cushion me in this moment of distress; it got very disturbing and literally hopeless at a point; that is why I am overly emotional on seeing you”, a patient at the Tema General Hospital remarked.

Receiving the donation, Kombian Kambarim, Deputy Director of Administration at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital said: “Healthcare is very expensive. Unfortunately, about 5% of our patients are always unable to meet their financial obligation to us and this puts them in an uncomfortable condition; the gesture is timely and we are excited about it.”

On her part, Mrs. Gladys Bonsu, Deputy Director of Nursing Services (Child Health) at the Tema General Hospital commended Surfline and expressed the hope that the company makes it a routine exercise to continually extend a helping hand to the needy.