Shocking! Upper East Regional hospital has no surgeon

The facility as a referral Centre of the Region has only two specialists – a Paediatrician and a Gynaecologist.

The Upper East Regional hospital is in dire need of surgical doctors to serve its growing population of patients.

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The hospital has 10 medical officers, which include three Cuban doctors who are currently on annual leave.

The situation is hampering health care delivery at the entire facility of 220-bed capacity.

Dr Patrick Atobrah, the Medical Director of the hospital said the facility as a referral Centre of the Region had only two specialists – a Paediatrician and a Gynaecologist.

“We do not easily get doctors at the Out-Patient Department,” he said.

He explained that the hospital would need a minimum of 30 doctors of various categories to enable it to operate effectively.

Dr Atobrah also called on young doctors to accept postings to the region, adding that “they will see all the medical conditions they learnt from their textbooks manifest in patients, and would boost their level of experience than staying in the Urban Centres.”

The Medical Director also raised issues about the shortage of water to the hospital, arguing that “although the Region was deprived, its natives were Ghanaians and deserved the maximum comfort in seeking health care services.”

The Greatest Threat To Chocolate Isn’t What You Think

The cultivation of cacao has always been a risky venture. Aging trees limit productivity; disease decimates about 30% of annual production; and climate change studies show the crop will be adversely affected by higher temperatures and increased water evaporation. But the looming, more immediate threat is economic and more personal: young farmers in West Africa—the region where the majority of the world’s cocoa is grown—do not want to grow the crop that becomes chocolate.  The average age of a farmer in Ghana, the world’s second-largest producer of cocoa, is 52. The reluctance of younger generations of farmers to grow the crop is understandable. In the last year, the price of commodity cocoa has dropped from $3,000 to $2,000 per ton. According to a 2014 report by the International Labor Rights Forum, the majority of cocoa producers earn roughly $2 a day.

While the guaranteed price paid at the farm level hasn’t yet dropped in Ghana, regulators in Ivory Coast have reduced compensation to 700 CFA francs ($1.25) per kilogram for the current harvest (about $0.57 per pound) from roughly $1.96 a year ago. As Bloomberg recently reported, “a price difference of more than 30 percent with neighboring Ghana” has resulted in farmers smuggling cacao across the border in growing areas in Ivory Coast that account for about 15% of the country’s production. They are looking for a better price for a crop they have worked hard for; it takes up to four years to grow cacao trees, and harvesting the pods is time-consuming and tireless work.

But the pay isn’t high enough—and the threat of lower wages looms large as Ghana is reported to be reaping its biggest cocoa harvest in six years (adding to existing challenges of oversupply). In his speech at last week’s World Cocoa Foundation Partnership Meeting, the Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board Joseph Boahen Aidoo confirmed that prices are not high enough to sustain interest. “Prices are the best fertilizer for improving livelihoods,” he said. “Prices send signals to farmers as to the amount of time and labor to invest in cocoa production. Thus, low prices constitute a major threat to the sustainability of the [cocoa] industry.”

 

 “Most of these farmers are people who have families—sometimes three, five children,” says Sako Warren, the executive secretary of the World Cocoa Farmers Organization. “As Africans, the family does not only mean your immediate children. It also means your aunt, your uncle, your sister’s children. So you, as a smallholder cocoa farmer living in those villages, have the responsibility to solve the problems of all these family people, including yours.”

This is why, Aidoo explains, farmers are turning to illegal small-scale gold mining known as galamsey, a practice that offers quick money but pollutes water and introduces heavy metals into the soil. If unchecked, it, along with climate change and a disinterested younger generation of farmers, will harm the chances of growing cocoa—or any other crop.

Another rape case at Assin Adadiemtem; victim hanged to die

This comes on the back of the alleged defilement of a 4-year-old girl in the same community.

A teenager at Assin Adadiemtem in the Central region has been narrating how she was brutally raped and hanged to die by a member of the community.

This comes on the back of the alleged defilement of a 4-year-old girl in the same community.

The teenager, who is an 18-year-old Junior High School (JHS) graduate said her attacker called her to send her while she was helping her sister to sell eggs at her end.

She told Accra-based Joy FM that in the process of taking the money from him, he dragged her into his room, tore her dress and had sex on several occasions with her.

She said she attempted calling her mother but the man, who has been identified as Ebenezer, took the phone from her and destroyed it.

She was also screaming but no one could hear her voice as the man’s radio was loud.

According to her, Ebenezer, out of anger, slapped her and tied a rope around her neck and hanged her inside his room. He subsequently assaulted her physically until she fell from the rope and hit her head on the floor and fell unconscious.

The victim has now had to live with the scar from the noose of the rope tied around her neck by her assailant.

The mother of the victim said her daughter is now depressed following the incident.

She said she is surprised that the man who is said to be a teacher in the community, could do that to her daughter, considering he is close to the family.

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The suspect is currently nowhere to be found. The mother of the victim said the family members of the suspect are in the meantime pleading with her to have the issue settled at home.

But she has since disagreed and is demanding justice for her daughter.Source:Pocket News