... to test staff competencies in disaster management
Kumasi, Jan. 7 GNA - The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi on Monday simulated a disaster scene at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium to assess staffers level of preparedness to effectively manage mass emergencies that might arise during the Ghana 2008 Africa Cup of Nations Soccer Fiesta, which is only about two weeks away. The simulation come as a means of evaluating the professional response of participants of an earlier workshop organised by KATH in collaboration with EDVICE, an Israeli accident and disaster management consultancy firm.

With Kumasi being one of the venues for the continental event, the Hospital, which is the only referral centre in the Northern sector of the country, decided to train personnel from peripheral hospitals, security agencies and disaster management institutions to increase their poise for emergencies ahead of the fiesta.

Mrs Patience Yeboah-Ampong, Director of Nursing Services, who spoke to the Ghana News Agency after the exercise, said as part of measures to ensure that casualties from the stadium were managed with dispatch, less congested routes from the stadium to KATH had been charted to ensure an unimpeded road access to ambulances that might be carrying the seriously injured to the Hospital.

She appealed to the general public and commuters to cooperate by giving way to ambulances on their way from the stadium to the Hospital. In the two-hour long simulation exercise, a typical stadium situation was created in which enthusiastic soccer fans cheering their teams clashed.

The Police in an attempt to bring the crowd under control fired teargas canisters into the crowd and in the ensuing stampede a number of the spectators sustained various degrees of injuries. They were rushed to KATH in ambulances in order of the degree of injury and conditions through the earmarked routes.

At KATH, a ready emergency team headed by Dr Kwabena Opuni, Head of the Accident and Emergency Unit, showed impressive skills in the way patients in critical conditions were given emergency treatment thereby stabilizing their conditions at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), while those who were brought in later in less severe conditions were also treated and discharged.