Businessman and philanthropist, Mr Seidu Agongo, has constructed a GHS857,000 Out-Patient Department (OPD) block for the Child Emergency Unit of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

The 30-bed block was completed in December 2018 and ready for use but yet to be officially handed over.

During a site tour of the block, the Matron, Mrs Evangeline Narh, told journalists that the new block will supplement the existing 22-bed capacity block, which is almost always congested, as a result of the average daily patient population rate of between 30 and 50.

The usual congestion, she noted, frustrates healthcare delivery, and, therefore, expressed immense gratitude to Mr Agongo for coming to the aid of the unit with his beneficence.

The unit, she revealed, is the only referral health post for emergency cases involving children in the Greater Accra Region.

In response to an appeal made by Mrs Narh for air conditioners to be fixed in the block and sheds erected within its precincts to provide shelter for parents and guardians of patients brought to the unit, Mr Agongo ordered that three ACs are fixed and canopies raised for outside the facility.

For his part, the Head of the Department of Child Health at Korle-Bu, Prof Ebenezer Badoe, expressed gratitude to Mr Agongo for his timely kindness and promised that the block will be maintained well and used to for the benefit of the entire country.

Prof Badoe used the opportunity to urge for more of such assistance from corporate institutions and people with the wherewithal, to resource the unit. He lamented the lack of space for staff and patients as well as a dearth of human resources at the emergency unit.

Mr Agongo explained to journalists after the tour that he decided to put up the facility after experiencing and witnessing firsthand, the harrowing conditions under which babies and little children are cared for at the existing and often-congested 22-bed space.

He said while visiting the unit in 2017 to console one of his employees who lost a child during delivery at the facility, he saw how as many of four babies shared a basket meant for one, while others were being attended to on the bare floor, as a result of congestion and lack of space.

“One of the officers, one Dr Otoo, jokingly asked if I was going to build them a new block and we all laughed over it,” Mr Agongo recalled.

Mr Agongo, who currently sponsors the education of 81 pupils and students from the basic to tertiary level in the country, said he later made a formal request for a piece of land so he could put up the 30-bed block, and was obliged.

He said he tries as much as possible to make sure that he uses his God-given success in life to help the vulnerable and underprivileged, since he himself came from very humble beginnings.