Tamale Teaching Hospital To Establish Plastic Surgery Centre

C.E.O of TTH

The Chief Executive Officer of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Dr. Ken Sagoe has called for a very close and effective collaboration between his outfit and the Reconstructive, Plastic Surgery and Burn Centre (RPSBC) of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital so as to enable the former also establish a similar specialize centre in future.

According to him, there was the need for such a partnership between the two institutions so that in the near future RPSBC could be set up at the TTH in order to deal with complicated surgeries that emanated from burns and other injuries.

Dr. Sagoe who made this call during a free medical outreach programme jointly organized by the aforementioned institutions with support from the Ministry of Health and the Northern Regional Coordinating Council in Tamale, said he would be ready to provide scholarship to any houseman who would be ready and willing to specialize in plastic surgery.

About 200 people including men, women and children from the three regions of the North –Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions, were screened and successfully underwent various forms of surgery within one week at the Tamale Teaching Hospital. 

According to the Public Relations Officer of the TTH, Gabriel Nii-Out Ankrah, 79 people out of the 200 screened underwent various forms of surgery. Adding, he said only one person has been referred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital for special attention due to the nature of her condition. 

The outreach programme also afforded some medical doctors and housemen of the hospital the opportunity to be trained so as to build their capacity in readiness for emergency situations in future. 

The Northern Regional Director of the Ghana Health Services, Dr. Akwasi Twumasi, also reiterated his call on medical doctors and other critical health personnel to accept postings to district hospitals, most of which were understaffed.

According to him, those hospitals lacked the requisite manpower to be able to handle most of the health problems of the people and there was the need for more health personnel to go there and salvage the situation.

Medical Dir. RPSBC, Korle-Bu TTH

On his part, Dr. Opoku Ware Ampomah, Medical Director of the RPSBC of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital expressed fears that with Ghana as an oil economy, there were going to be an increase in burn injuries in the country due to the high risk that oil transportation across the country posed.

Dr. Ampomah who led the 27 team of medical doctors and other specialists to the Tamale Teaching Hospital health outreach programme, said there was the need for government to augment the existing facilities in order to take care of the situation during emergencies. 

He also observed that the problem of burn management and prevention was further compounded by poor education and preventive strategies at the community, corporate and nationals. “There is a profound lack of appropriate legislation or its enforcement to correct these anomalies, and this combined with the widespread ignorance about what to do with routine fire hazards, sets the stage for disastrous general handling of severe burn cases, and increased post-injury complications”, he noted.

Meanwhile, among other things, the outreach programme was planned to kick-start regular clinical visits to the North. In the short term, it enhanced access to services, built local capacity and provided exposure and training to medical students, doctors as well as allied health personnel.