Tamale Teaching Hospital leads in neonatal births
Dr Abbas Adam, Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Tamale Teaching Hospital, said here on Friday the hospital recorded over 1,500 neonatal births in 2015.
This makes it the highest record of neonatal births in hospitals across the country.
Dr Adam made the disclosure in Tamale when Mr Koji Makino, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Country Representative to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, paid a courtesy call on him during a three-day tour of JICA -funded projects in the Northern Region.
He explained that neonatal medical cares were provided by Teaching Hospitals to premature babies and those born with certain infections and defects.
He said the large catchment area of the TTH, which covers the Brong-Ahafo, the northern part of the Volta, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, Southern Burkina Faso and Northern Togo had accounted for the large numbers of neonatal care admissions at the hospital.
Dr Adam lauded Japan for the technical support it had provided for the training of staff of the NICU of the hospital.
He said the Japan trained staff, especially Dr Mumuni Alhassan, the Head of the NICU, after his training programme, returned home to transform the NICU into a centre of excellence.
“JICA always sets the pace for others to follow,” Dr Adam, also a beneficiary of the JICA training programme stated.
He also appealed to JICA to extend the collaboration with the NICU to other units of the hospital such as the Emergency and Accident Unit and the Intensive Care Unit.
He said the Ghana government was putting up a new facility for the NICU, which when completed by 2018 would accommodate 80 neonatal cases.
He said the current NICU facility which accommodates 40 cases was being over -stretched.
Dr Alhassan said the culture of discipline and punctuality inculcated in him during his six weeks study visit in Japan had empowered him to transform the NICU.
He said due to the high level of commitment, discipline and punctuality among staff of the Unit, neonatal mortality had been reduced drastically.
Alhaji Abdulai Abdel Kadiri Zakaria, TTH Director of Nursing Service, appealed to JICA to renew the training programme and technical cooperation with the Hospital.
Mr Makino recounted that the JICA training programme started in Ghana in 1976 and since then more than 3,000 Ghanaians had benefited from it.
He said since the goal of the training programme was to share experiences, transfer knowledge and technology to overseas participants using the adopt and adapt approach in a wide variety of fields in Japan or a third county, its assessment would help evaluate the overall contribution of Japan to the development of Ghana.
He said various government officials had benefited from the JICA training programmes and were playing their key roles in the socioeconomic development of Ghana.
He said JICA could continue to support the TTH, especially the NICU.
Source: GNA