Lake side Clinic

On Tuesday July 12, 2016 I joined a group of individuals from my hospital (Ankaase) and from the Methodist head office in Kumasi for a visit to Amakom, a small village  about 20 miles southeast of Kumasi. This village is home to a Methodist clinic and also Lake Bosomtwe, the biggest natural lake in Ghana. Its beautifully located. But due to financial hardship, poorly run insurance scheme and a bad road network, the clinic is not being utilized as it should. Yet, there are people in the community who need the services of this clinic. 

Road heading into Amakom. Lake Bosomtwe is in the background

Because the people in the community are very poor (mostly farmers) and cannot afford clinical services, the clinic sometimes provide free service. But financial constraints and lack of medical resources prevent them from adequately providing care, even if its free. A few weeks ago, a young patient died there because of lack of intravenous (IV) fluids. 

 A view of the lake from the clinic. 24 villages surround Lake Bosomtwe.


The purpose of our visit was to evaluate the current state of the clinic and donate some items to help with its daily management. Donated items included medicines, IV fluids and some funds donated by both the Kumasi head office and friends of the Ghana Methodist church from Ireland.


Staff and representatives of the Church and Clinic.



Due to poor utilization of the clinic as a result of poverty, the clinic administrator appealed for funds and used those funds to register some of the inhabitants of the village for insurance. This was done to help the villagers afford healthcare in time of sickness and hopefully decrease mortality. Unfortunately, insurance claims haven’t been paid for the last 7 months. In addition, the villagers still think that they need to pay for health services so they resort to herbal medicine whenever they are sick. This has resulted in an under-utilization of the facility and negatively impacted finances of the clinic and health outcomes of some of the inhabitants. We are hoping these donations will help the staff of the clinic provide quality care for the inhabitants of these villages.


Taking a tour of the facility.



Comments

  1. jan colbertJuly 18, 2016 at 11:47 AM

    Manny, Enjoying your blog and the pics! You are doing great work! Jan

    ReplyDelete

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