Tema medical group honoured

...for years of excellent medical delivery and training of health professionals.

Story: George Sydney Abugri

In a citation accompanying an award presented to the Narh-Bita Hospital at the third edition of the Tema Excellence Awards last week, the award sponsors expressed gratitude to the medical facility and its staff “for giving life to Tema, Ghana and indeed Africa.”

For those unfamiliar with the work of the Narh-Bita institutions in the port and industrial city, the accolade probably sounded like the overstatement of the week.

For the majority of residents of Tema however, the name Narh-Bita has become a generic label for the cluster of private institutions providing medical services and educational opportunities for the training of health and medical professionals.

First, there is the 32-year-old, 103-bed Narh-Bita Hospital at Tema Community Four, housed in a plush edifice with engaging works of sculpture and scenic landscaping on the frontage and a broad range of excellent medical services on 24-hour offer within it’s walls.

Then there is theTema International Neuro-Center (TIN) located within the hospital: It was here that in November 2007 for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa, a patient with the dreaded Parkinson's disease had a brain pacemaker placed within the sensitive structure of his brain, in order to stop the disabling, abnormal movements associated with the disease.

The head of the surgical team, Ghanaian neurosurgeon, Dr. Nii Bonney Andrews led colleague surgeons, Dr. Van den Mencken and Dr. Rick Shuurman, both of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam and Dr Philip Batiade of Germany to successfully perform a marathon surgical operation to treat the patient.

The 63-year old patient had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for 20 years and had not been able to walk steadily. He fell frequently and had multiple shoulder dislocations as a result. He also shook uncontrollably and had great difficulty rising from a chair.

The epoch-making medical drama began that memorable morning in the Scan Suite of the Medlab Building located at Roman Ridge in Accra at 8 a.m:

The surgeons first placed a specialized metal frame called a Leksell frame round the patient's head. A special scan of the patient's head was next performed in order to obtain a detailed map of his brain, to pin point the exact location of the brain abnormality, where an electrode/wire was to be placed.

With the metal frame still attached to the patient's head, the patient was transported by ambulance to the Narh-Bita Hospital in Tema. The main surgical operation began at 9am and lasted seven hours.

“For the first time in Ghana and indeed sub-Saharan Africa, a patient with Parkinson's disease had a brain pacemaker placed within the sensitive structure of the brain, in order to stop the disabling, abnormal movements in the patient”, the leader of the team of surgeons, Dr. Andrews, later wrote in his preliminary report. Parkinson's disease is a disorder of the nervous system characterized by violent trembling of the hands, arms, legs, jaws, and face as well as stiffness of the limbs and trunk. Victims of Parkinson's disease have great difficulty walking and only manage to shuffle along.

They also have difficulty in chewing and swallowing food, speaking and urinating, and suffer from constipation, skin problems, and sleep disruptions.

Parkinson's disease patients also have great difficulty getting up, after sitting for a while. They literally get stuck in chairs after sitting for some time. As a result of these symptons, Parkinsons disease is widely confused with stroke.

So successful was the surgical operation, that the lucky 63-year old patient of Parkinson’s disease made remarkable progress within hours of the operation:

He was able to walk better, his tremors decreased considerably and 48 hours after the surgery, he was able to sit for more than an hour, playing, an exciting game of chess, his favourite pastime.

The Narh-Bita Hospital itself is manned by more than 30 medical specialists across a wide range of medical disciplines and a workforce of 250 staff.

The hospital provides medical services for more than 60 private and public organizations and scores of thousands of residents of Tema numerous communities and suburbs. It is also a popular referral center for patients from other countries in the sub region.

Just as famous as the hospital, is the Narh-Bita College whose curriculum is regulated by the Nurses and Midwives Council of Ghana and the University of Ghana.

The college runs the three-year General Nursing Diploma, the three-year Advanced Medical Assistants, the Certificate programme for Health Assistant Clinical (HAC) and the Medical Laboratory Technicians programmes.

Students and faculty benefit from a program of tropical nursing research collaboration and has staff and students exchange programmes with several universities in the UK, USA and Denmark.

Many rural communities have benefited from the school’s now popular annual Students and Staff Medical Outreach Programme. Communities which targets for relief medical aid, poor communities lacking basic amenities such as schools, potable water supply and health facilities.

Under the programme, teams of medical staff and students from the school treat the people of such communities for malaria, anemia, bilharzias, scabies, intestinal worm infestations, eye diseases and other medical conditions prevalent in rural communities. Cases requiring specialist consultations are referred to hospitals. Yet another Narh-Bita medical facility is the multi-million cedi Narh-Bita Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture Center. Dr Edward Narh explains surprising the location of the clinic in an orthodox medical setting: “It is useful to incorporate traditional medicine in orthodox medical practice as complementary or alternative medicine because about 50 per cent of the national population still has no access to orthodox medicine.” The veteran physician says there are now highly qualified practitioners of herbal medicine trained at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, who have greatly improved the quality and efficacy and practice of herbal medical practice. The center has two main units- an Acupuncture Department and Herbal Medicine Department The Narh-Bita School of Exercise Medicine, Sports and Wellness which is one of the Shools of the Narh Bita College, is the first educational institution of its kind in Africa.

The mission of the school which is headed by Professor Reginald Ocansey is to train health and sports professionals who will administer appropriate dosages of physical exercise for the treatment, prevention and management of diseases in Ghana.

The man behind the medical group, Dr. Edward Narh, is a fellow of the West Africa College of Physicians, a fellow of the Ghana College of Physicians, an Honorary Teaching Fellow of Napier University, Edinburgh and a recipient of the Ghana’s Order of the Volta Award.

On receiving his award this week, Dr. Narh staunchly insisted that that award rightly belonged to the large team of staff and workers of the Narh-Bita institutions in Tema and not to him:

“The credit is truly not mine but for the team. It is a great team with a large family spirit. All our institutions and their staff operate on sound Christian principles and a commitment to handwork and excellence. That probably explains our progress this far.”

PS: REFER TO AWARD PHOTO FOR CAPTION.