Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has received a new blood-testing machine for leukemia patients which means their blood can now be tested in Ghana instead of being sent to South Africa.
Dr Amma Benneh-Akwasi Kuma from the haematology department expressed delight at receiving the genexpert machine and said that previously patients had to pay GHS1,000 every three months for their blood samples to be flown to South Africa for testing.
"In fact, with the machine here, patients would pay far less to have the same test done and it would save the time going up there to South Africa and also waiting for the result because we would now do it here and it would be an instant result," she said.
She said chronic leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells characterised by increased and unregulated growth of predominantly myeloid cells in the bone marrow and accumulation of cells in the blood.
Dr Kuma advised the general public to visit the hospital for check-up if they felt painful enlargement of the spleen, inscreased illness from infectious anaemia and thrombocytopenia with easy bruising.
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