By Kojo Mbiah
A well-timed provision of car parts and other auxiliary medical equipment by Mr James Gyakye Quason, the Assin North Member of Parliament (MP) had rebirth the district’s Ambulance that had been grounded for weeks.
The items are new car tires which are intended to replace the worn-out car tires that were hampering their operations and various adjustable beds to aid in patient, transportation, and referrals.
The Ambulance serves more than 58 communities through the digitised state-of-the-art ambulance dispatch management system, integrated with the national digital property addressing system.
The district’s ambulance had been broken down due to faulty car tires, creating discomfort in attending to residents’ health emergencies.
Even though the facility serves more than 80,000 people occupying 475 square, numerous appeals to the District Assembly and other corporate entities to support the maintenance of the ambulance had fallen on deaf ears.
Alternatively, residents had to resort to the services of private facilities in responding to serious health emergencies at exorbitant prices and inaccessible in the villages and difficult-to-reach communities.
Other residents had to rely on services from other adjoining districts bounded to the north by the Adansi South District in the Ashanti Region, to the south by the Assin Foso Municipal, to the east by the Birim South District in the Eastern Region, and to the west by the Twifo Atti-Morkwa District.
Handing out the items on behalf of MP, Mr Sylvester Amakye Nyarkoh, the National Democratic Congress Elections Director of Communications for the Assin North Constituency, put emphasis on the MP’s commitment to improving the welfare of the residents in the district.
That he said, manifested in his quick response to the Service’s request letter to ensure an effective emergency medical service to help improve the district’s emergency response capabilities.
Expressing the Service’s ordeal, Mr Obed Adu Sarkodie, the Advance Emergency Medical Technologist (AEMT) in the District was grateful to the MP.
Beaming with smiles, he said: “We are happy to note that eventually the wait is over and the ambulance is now fit for purpose and ready for use. We need such support to provide pre-hospital emergency care to accident victims’ road traffic, domestic, industrial, and medical.
“To provide stand-by emergency cover at mass public meetings and to liaise with other emergency services in times of disaster or mass casualty incidents,” and urged the constituents to keep supporting and praying for him to facilitate ongoing development projects.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the year 2020 commissioned and distributed the 307 ambulances procured to help augment operations of the Service.
The new ambulances were distributed in all 275 constituencies in Ghana in fulfillment of the government’s 2016 election campaign to help improve emergency healthcare delivery.
According to the Ministry of Health before the commissioning of the 307 ambulances, there were only 50 functioning ambulances.
