Sunyani, May 19, GNA - A team of 30 urologists from Ananse Foundation, a Danish-Ghanaian NGO, in collaboration with Brong-Ahafo Regional Hospital, is undertaking an outreach service at the hospital. Dr. De Wall Hans, Chairman of the NGO, said at the opening of the programme on Monday that the four-day outreach programme would involve operating and teaching doctors complex urological surgeries. They are expected to perform operations on congenital malformation of external genitalia, post circumcision megalomeatus, urethral stricture, vagina artesia, female epispadia and hypospadia. Dr. Hans, who is the leader of the team, said the NGO aimed at improving basic urological care within sub-Saharan Africa and was running programmes in Ghana and Tanzania.

He said the activities of the Foundation were mainly in most deprived areas of beneficiary countries in order to bring urological care to the doorsteps of the poor and the needy. Dr Hans said the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme had improved the accessibility of urological service in Ghana. Dr. Alexander Kofi Egote, head of urology unit at the hospital, said management of urological diseases had been transformed within the past 15 years.

"The management of commonest diseases like symptomatic BPH and Ca of prostrate have seen a phase of transformation from traditional open surgery to endoscopic surgery", he said. "The introduction of laparoscopy in the management of localised Ca of the prostate, followed by robotic surgery in the urologic armamentarium has resulted in major changes in our daily surgical practices".

Dr. Daniel Asare, Medical Superintendent of the hospital later led the team of urologists to lay wreaths at three busts erected at the forefront of the hospital.

Dr. Isaac Kofi Bentsi, Dr. Benjamin Osei-Wiafe and Emeritus Professor John Kwateboi Marmon Quartey, surgical urologists, died in a road accident on their way back to Accra after undertaking an outreach programme at the hospital in 2005.