Akatsi Municipal Hospital to provide surgical training to housemen

The Akatsi Municipal Hospital has received accreditation from the Ghana Medical and Dental Council to offer basic surgical training to newly qualified doctors.

A statement signed by Dr Divine N. Banyubala, the Acting Registrar of the Council, said the accreditation, which would last for two years, could be withdrawn in the event the standards for the accreditation were compromised.

The move would enhance practical knowledge of the medical doctors in surgical operations, it said.

Dr Karikari Bonsu, the Medical Superintendent of the Hospital, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the novel programme would help expose the housemen to standard techniques as they prepared to perform various clinicals to propel them to higher heights in their surgical practice.

He said the housemen would be taken through sessions such as theatre etiquette, instruments handling, knotting, handling suturing, abdominal incision and closure, haemostasis, dissection, handling bowels, vessels, and traumatised tissues, as well as plastering.

Dr Bonsu, a Surgeon Specialist, said three newly qualified doctors would be receiving surgical training from the facility, every year, to equip them to meet a benchmark of standard medical practice.

The Akatsi Municipal Hospital receives surgical emergencies from the Keta Municipal Hospital and the Adidome and Sogakope District hospitals among others.

That, notwithstanding, the Hospital was burdened with infrastructural problems, Dr Bonsu said.

"You can see these abandoned hospital projects, which are seventy-five per cent complete but are still resting in the bush for years now," he said.

A visit by the GNA to some of the departments saw most of the structures deteriorating.