Nkwanta Hospital sets up health research centre

Nkwanta (V/R), May 13, GNA - The Nkwanta District Hospital is undertaking the construction of a multi-purpose Health Research Centre at a cost of 800 million cedis from its internally generated revenue. Dr Koku Awoonor-Williams, Medical Superintendent of the Hospital announced this when briefing members of the Volta Region Branch of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) during a visit to health facilities in the district.

He said the research centre would be used in testing health related strategies and intervention to be fed into the national health information network.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said the centre became necessary to create a reliable health data on the district, which had a peculiar health situation rather than over-reliance on national health statistics for its projections and actions.

He said for example, the over-reliance on national HIV/AIDS data would not provide the realistic basis for addressing the peculiarities of HIV/AIDS related situations in the district whose catchments include Nkwanta, Dambai, Damanko and some communities in Togo.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said critical areas to engage the attention of the centre were HIV/AIDS, nutrition, maternal and childcare and monitoring and evaluation.

He said a yearlong district HIV/AIDS study would soon be launched with assistance from Health Sector Support for HIV/AIDS, DANIDA and the Ghana-Dutch Foundation

Dr Awoonor-Williams was optimistic that the Community-Based Health Planning Services (CHPS) developed by the district would facilitate the smooth take-off of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) through sensitisation of the people.

He said an Inter-Agency Co-ordinating Committee, set up by the district to co-ordinate activities of agencies addressing the water supply problem in the area had helped in reducing the guinea-worm menace in the district.

Dr Awoonor-Williams explained that hitherto, the allocation of water supply systems was done haphazardly without taking into consideration where such services were most needed.