Project: Department of Physiotherapy for a Rural Hospital in Ghana
At the beginning of May I opened my email and saw the
following communication from the College of Physiotherapists here in the
Baleares: ‘The NGO Mediterranea is developing a project in Ghana. Part of this project is to start a
physiotherapy dept in a small hospital in the East of the country just where
the Volta enters the sea. We need
volunteers to help get things started and train the future local team.’
I immediately started to gather more information. I discovered that the hospital Dangme
East in Ada Foah was organised by one doctor, Dr Philip Narth, who works 24
hours a day all days of the year and has 30 nurses for a population of
186000. The ratio of nurses per
inhabitant in Spain is 531 per 100000 and of doctors 445 per 100000. In this region of Africa there is 1 for
186000! It seemed to me to be
completely disproportionate. At
the level of physiotherapy it seemed clear, a hospital that cares for a high
percentage of cardiovascular and traffic accidents needs to have physiotherapy. Also to rehabilitate posttraumatic
injuries, to assist the recovery of patients who have been operated, to reduce
recovery time, to assist in the regeneration of epithelial tissue, burns,
ulcers…these and others are the functions that we could develop.
I also discovered that Mediterranea had fulfilled a number
of other projects at the hospital, including setting up a laboratory for the
hospital and building a residence for mothers visiting the hospital with their
children. I was also surprised and
happy to read in the Mediterranea blog that, thanks to the generosity of some
British members, the physiotherapy project already had a substantial amount of
equipment in Ghana waiting to be used.
From that point onwards things have moved quite
quickly. At the end of May we had
our first meeting where we were able to learn more about Mediterranea, it’s
ideas and philosophy, see some photos of the hospital and region, we covered
some logistic themes like vaccines and first aid and learnt about all the
documentation that was needed. At
the meeting we organised an administrative nucleus of physios to coordinate the
physiotherapy side of the project.
We followed this meeting with another some days later and
had a number of lecturers from the UIB (University of Baleares) attend. We established minimum and maximum
stays for the volunteers in Ghana and agreed to group together the trips of
volunteers to minimise the disruption to Dr Narth’s team in Ghana since the
airport is 200+ km from the hospital.
We also allocated the different tasks amongst ourselves. As I was not able to attend the first
meeting and as someone completely new to this type of project I was hypnotised
by the energy and enthusiasm of the other physios at this meeting and their
desire to develop our profession into regions where it’s needed. I also appreciated the big effort that
would be required to coordinate the trips and handovers of not only our Spanish
physios but also British physios who had responded with enthusiasm to a small
communication from Mediterranea distributed through the Institute of
Physiotherapists in the UK.
A couple of weeks later a third meeting was held to clarify
some details and to go deeper into the second part of the project which is the
training that we are to provide to the locals in Ghana. The first part of the project is
immediate. To get the
physiotherapy dept up and running and we shall achieve this by maintaining a
flow of volunteers to the hospital.
The second part will be a little more complex and will involve some
communication between the University of Ghana’s physiotherapy dept based in
Accra and the UIB, in order to launch an official training course for physios
in that part of the country.
All that remains to be said at the moment is that I am
sincerely delighted to have received that first email from the College of
Physiotherapists and to be involved in this project of Mediterranea’s in Dangme
East Hospital. I hope to be able
to share my enthusiasm with my colleagues and for us to be able to achieve both
aims of this project.
Alicia Moratiel, Physiotherapist and Member of Mediterranea.
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