Clinic in Gyetiase
Children playing with one of our doctors by the new clinic in Gyetiase.
When we first starting working in the Ashanti Region our intention was simply to provide villages with clean water, to train them in health, hygiene and latrine construction, and then to move on. However, we soon realised there was an urgent need for medical care. For three years, we took volunteer doctors to Ashanti to assess health needs and learned about the many sicknesses and health risks the people suffer.
In particular, many of the women have been forced by poverty to work as prostitutes, and HIV/Aids is rife.
The villagers begged us to continue to provide medical treatment, and during the summer of 2007, over two hundred Ashanti men worked free of charge to build the ground floor of a two-storey clinic/hostel in Gyetiase. Building costs were minimal, and the work was finished in record time and to a high standard.
When it is registered, the clinic will be staffed by a state registered midwife or nurse and be visited by a doctor. It will also serve as the centre for community health workers, whom we hope to train and station in other villages. We will provide it with an ambulance/mobile clinic.
It will also serve as a centre for eye care, since eye health is particularly poor. Thanks to the generosity of UK opticians, SpecSavers, we are commissioning 1,000 cataract operations, making an enormous difference to the recipients' quality of life. SpecSavers will also provide a full range of eye testing equipment for the clinic, together with recycled, graded, second hand spectacles from their London stores.