GHANAIAN SPECIALISTS ABROAD TO OFFER SERVICES TO KATH (PAGE 40)

A Number of foreign-based Ghanaian specialists and consultants have expressed interest in relocating to the country to offer their services at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).
Among the overseas-based Ghanaian doctors are a group of specialists who have constituted themselves into a faculty to start the training of emergency physicians at the modern Emergency and Accident Centre, when the project is completed in October, this year.
The Chief Executive of the hospital, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, said the brain gain was one of the major benefits accruing to KATH following massive transformation at the hospital since 2001.
Dr Nsiah-Asare disclosed this at the opening of the 2008 mid-year performance review workshop of the hospital in Kumasi yesterday.
He mentioned some of the projects as the national emergency and accident centre, the completed ultra modern pathology centre and the specialist consultation rooms project.
These and other projects, Dr Nsiah-Asare observed, had also resulted in the increasing number of collaborations the hospital was receiving from international medical institutions.
He indicated that KATH had successfully signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the US-based Pathologist Overseas (PO), a volunteer organisation of specialist pathologists who operate in under-served areas of the world, to improve pathology services and training at the hospital.
This had become possible due to the completion of the 209-body ultra modern mortuary.
The Chief Executive said as a result of this collaboration, KATH would soon start a residency programme in pathology after the necessary accreditation had been secured from the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said the collaboration with PO had ensured that the waiting time for pathological test results, which took months to get because they were sent outside the country, could now be obtained in one week.
He was grateful to the government for the project, which, he said, had greatly increased the attractiveness of the hospital.
Dr Nsiah-Asare expressed the hope that the reactivation of works on the 34-year-old children and maternity blocks would be completed by 2010 to enable them to further improve services.
For waste management, one of the major challenges facing the hospital, KATH has started the construction of waste management facilities to improve handling of waste at the hospital.
The contract has been awarded for the construction of a 25-cubic metre incinerator at the cost of GH¢100,000 to take care of clinical and general solid waste.