A Christian non-governmental organisation, MyHelp-YourHelp Foundation, has provided an amount of GH¢70,000 to help cater for the medical bills of some patients at the Sogakope District Hospital.
The donation, presented on December 26, was inspired by the goodwill of the Christmas season.
Beneficiaries were selected from the maternity unit, patients in the children’s ward, the accident and emergency unit, as well as the male and female wards.
Donation
Beneficiaries were selected after consultations between members of the foundation and the hospital management to identify patients whose bills qualified for support.
As part of the process, some beneficiaries were contacted at home and asked to return to the hospital after verification for their bills to be settled.
Payments were then made directly at the hospital’s accounts office, while another group of members visited the ward to distribute hampers and interact with the women.
Through the consultation, the foundation also settled an extra GH¢10,000 medical bill for a cancer patient who had been admitted to the hospital.
Aside from taking care of the medical bills, the foundation donated 50 hampers made up of assorted baby items valued at about GH¢35,000 to mothers at the maternity ward.
The kind gesture was extended to the doctors, matrons, nurses, midwives and other staff of the hospital who were presented with donated food items worth about GH¢30,000.
The items included bags of rice, cooking oil, spaghetti and other food items.
Guiding principle
Leading the team to make the presentation, the President and Founder of MyHelp-YourHelp Foundation, Nicholas Cofie, said the organisation selected Sogakope District Hospital after assessing several health facilities within the region.
He explained that the hospital was chosen because of its high delivery rate, with between 100 and 120 births recorded each month, as well as the financial challenges many women faced when seeking maternity care.
He said the intervention formed part of the foundation’s seventh anniversary activities and reflected its guiding principle of supporting the needy and less privileged.
He added that the foundation aligned its work with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to health and well-being.
Mr Cofie said over the past seven years, the foundation had carried out more than 20 projects across the country, including school renovations, borehole rehabilitation, feeding programmes, health outreach activities and support for orphanages and other vulnerable groups.
Recurring challenge
The Head of Administration at Sogakope District Hospital, Samuel Omega, described the support as timely, noting that the facility served patients from a wide catchment area, including communities outside Sogakope, such as Ada, Big Ada and Sege.
Mr Omega said unpaid bills remained a recurring challenge for the hospital, disclosing that more than 100 patients were currently listed as owing on the facility’s records. He explained that the GH¢70,000 support would help reduce part of the outstanding debt burden.
The Administrator of the Sogakope District Hospital said the hospital’s maternity ward had become overstretched due to increasing patient numbers and appealed for support to expand the facility to improve maternal care in the district and surrounding communities.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh