Panelists on the Eye on Port show
The Head of Clinical Services of the International Maritime Hospital, Dr. Helen Tettey, has called on the general public who are interested in both specialist and general health care to take advantage of IMaH as their services are of the international standard and yet affordable.
“We have the full complement of services; from lab, to radiology which includes CT Scan, MRI, fluoroscopy, mammography, ENT, dental and eye services, a dialysis centre all fully running,” she listed.
Speaking on Eye on Port’s panel discussion on the Role of International Maritime Health Facilities in Fighting Public Health Threats like COVID-19, she said the International Maritime Hospital has resumed all its expert surgical procedures that hitherto was on a break due to the coronavirus, and entreated the public to engage IMaH for all their health concerns.
She recounted a neurosurgery that was recently done by a team of medical professionals at IMaH which resonated in the Tema Community.
“This client was supposed to go to another facility but they had cancelled elective surgery yet he was getting more and more complicated. He couldn’t have the surgery in that facility, so he quickly came to IMaH and we did a craniotomy for him, and thankfully he has recovered amazingly. The patient was so grateful,” she revealed.
Dr. Tettey, who is also the Consultant Anaesthesiologist at the International Maritime Hospital entreated women in particular to take advantage of the improved gynaecological services available at the hospital facilities, citing success stories that from laparoscopic procedures in the removal of fibroids.
“What everybody knows is for an open surgery, to get the fibroid out, but what we are doing in IMaH is new. What we are doing is through a key hole. We won’t have to cut you open. And within the same day or next day you are ready to go home. The success stories are so many. We had to do one for a woman who had so many complications and the fibroid was making her situation even more complex, yet we did the surgery efficiently to her amazement,” she added.
The Head of Clinical Services at IMaH continued to urge the general public to adopt a prevention-oriented attitude towards their health rather than ad hoc solutions to health conditions during complications.
She said to encourage regular check-ups within the Ghanaian populace, IMaH introduces several initiatives periodically across the span of the year that cater to specific aspects of human health.
“What we do in IMaH is that we offer service to our clients in any way or form. Your health is important so whichever way we can get you to come we have introduced different packages. One which we were offering until the pandemic, is Hearty IMaH which allows a full heart screen at a subsidized fee,” she said.
The CEO of IMaH, Dr. Yaw Oppong, on the same program, emphasized that IMaH is not only available for members of the maritime industry but the entire Ghanaian populace as well as the International community.
“Ours is a fully-fledged medical facility that looks after everybody not just the maritime,” he stated.
Dr. Oppong added that although the patient attendance has generally reduced over the period of the coronavirus pandemic, its conducive mortuary facility remained attractive to clients.
“There was even a point where we had a nightmare where it got to full capacity. We even had to transform a cold room to add to it.”
He said after the partial lockdown experienced in the country which allowed clients to retrieve their corpses, allowed for some decongesting only for the mortuary facility to get to full capacity again.
This according to Dr. Oppong allowed for some expansion of the mortuary facility which has a hall that could be used for private burial services in consistency with the current convention.
“The hall can take about 50 people, but we have reduced to 25 in consistency with the president’s directive for social distancing,” he explained.
