Cape Coast Teaching Hospital embarks on health walk against non-communicable diseases

The Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH) on Saturday went for a health walk to sensitize the public on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and the need to exercise regularly to prevent their occurrence.

Survivors of various conditions joined the staff, management, and community members with placards informing the public on a raft of medical conditions including cancer, eye diseases, and osteogenesis imperfecta (a group of inherited disorders caused by defective genes).

The three-hour exercise, the penultimate of activities marking the Hospital’s 25th Anniversary celebration, took participants through some major streets of Cape Coast; Abura, Pedu, Aquarium, and Starlet 91.

Dr Eric Kofi Ngedu, the Chief Executive Officer, of CCTH, noted that NCDs were becoming a big global health concern, which needed to be tackled through preventive means instead of curative.

He maintained that frequent exercise was the surest way to mitigate the risk of many NCDs and urged the public to make exercising part of their daily lives.

“When you exercise your body regularly, you have a very active circulatory system and a potent immune system to fight many diseases,” he noted.

“It is not palatable to get sick and come to the hospital. We expect that Ghanaians will not get sick so that health personnel will visit people in their homes to do health promotion instead of the curative medicine that we are practicing.”

Touching on the growth of the Hospital, Dr Ngedu said management was satisfied with the progress made over the years in spite of all the challenges.

However, efforts were still on course to improve infrastructure, technology, and human resources to enhance service delivery and make the facility the greatest in Ghana, he said.

“I have no doubt that we are on the path to becoming a world-class leader in tertiary health care, medical education, and research,” Dr Ngedu said.

He expressed gratitude to the Government for its continuous support of infrastructure development and financial clearance to augment staff strength.

He also commended the management, past and present leadership, as well as staff for their dedication towards achieving the mandate and ensuring the progress of the facility.

“Management has lobbied for various projects, many of which are ongoing. The President visited the monumental Infectious Disease Centre last year, which is now 100 percent complete and only awaiting handing over,” he stated.

Dr Robert Incoom, the Director of Pharmacy, and Chairman of the Operations Committee of the Anniversary, said the health walk was a demonstration of how the Hospital was repositioning itself to deliver excellence in quality health care delivery.

The CCTH now had a fully-fledged clinical pharmacy unit, which took admitted patients through medication therapy review to optimize drug therapy and ensure patients received the best treatment.

“We are poised to expand the pharmaceutical and clinical pharmacy services in the hospital to ensure patients receive the best health care and also improve universal health coverage to people of the Central Region and Ghana at large,” he said.

The foundation stone for the hospital was laid in 1996 and was completed and commissioned in 1998 as a referral hospital but has now been upgraded to a teaching hospital.

The year-long anniversary is on the theme: “25 years of Quality Health Care: Repositioning for Excellence.”

It will be climaxed with a grand durbar on Wednesday, September 20, with the guest of honor being Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.