In case you missed our April email newsletter, check out this letter from Emma Lawrence, MedPLUS Connect's Executive Director!
This past January, I had the privilege to meet with health personnel at the Walewale District Hospital shortly after the delivery of a MedPLUS Connect shipment. Just two weeks prior, 14,372 pounds of medical supplies and equipment had arrived in Walewale, located in Ghana’s remote Northern Region. As we walked through the waiting area, which was overflowing with new patients, Walewale’s sole doctor spoke earnestly about the impact that the 28 donated hospital beds had already made at his hospital. In the children’s ward, beds now occupy a side corridor where patients previously had to lie on the ground during the rainy season when malaria is especially widespread. In the operating theatre, patients now have a bed to recovery on post-surgery. As we toured the wards, it was many of the items that I would have passed over before starting to work in Ghana—filing cabinets, bedside tables, doctors stools—that the nurses excitedly pointed out as huge assets to the daily functioning of the hospital.
A daylong bus ride to the west of Walewale is the Nandom District Hospital, the recipient of our most recent shipment. In late March, 12,346 pounds of supplies were eagerly received by Dr. Amesiya Robert, the Medical Director at Nandom. The majority of items provided in the shipment, including hospital beds and mattresses, IV poles, bedside tables, and basic consumable supplies, will be used to fill the empty rooms in a newly constructed maternity ward. In our small way, the MedPLUS Connect team is excited to work with our Ghanaian partners to help reach Nandom’s targets for reducing maternal mortality and increasing the number of healthy childbirths.
As always, we are open to your comments, suggestions, and questions. Please feel free to contact us at medplusconnect@gmail.com. To learn more about the ongoing work of MedPLUS Connect, please visit our website atwww.medplusconnect.org.
Emma Lawrence
Executive Director, MedPLUS Connect