Tamale Hospital installs gas plant for operations
The Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) now has a medical gas plant that generates and supplies gas to the various wards of the hospital.
Until the establishment of the plant, the hospital had to rely on private suppliers from Kumasi and Accra resulting in shortages sometimes.
The gas is generated from the atmosphere and subsequently processed through a compressor, a dryer and a tank.
It is later absorbed into a 2000-litre oxygen generator and piped through a terminal or bed-head units for onward transfer to needy patients.
According to the clinical engineering manager of the gas plant, Mr Nettey Williams, the facility has the ability to supply gas to 1000-beds even though the current bed capacity of the hospital is only 400.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic at the hospital on Wednesday, Mr Williams said the plant also produced compressed air for suction of body fluids and sterilisation through a similar process.
In an event of a power failure, he said, “we have a standby generator; there is also a back-up system with 18 oxygen cylinders that can last for about two days before the restoration of electricity,” he indicated.
On the management of the facility, Mr Williams gave an assurance that it was being administered efficiently and that staff of the hospital had been trained to maintain the equipment efficiently.
The installation of the plant in May, this year, formed part of the ongoing rehabilitation and refurbishment project of the hospital whose sod cutting was performed by the late President Attah Mills in April, 2010.
Work on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) centre has also reached an advanced stage.
When completed, it would not only serve the northern sector of the country but could also be accessed by patients from neighbouring countries.
Commenting on the MRI, the Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Nii Otu Ankrah, said work was about 98 per cent complete and that the machine had already arrived in the country and would soon be brought down for installation.
Source: Daily Graphic
This very important for the government to increase and focus Ghana energyon improving power supply in the country by increasing gas power plants for government institutions as much as possible as well as gas lines throughout the country especially new residential development whiles the old ones getting retrofitted.