Regional News of Saturday, 13 August 2011

Source: GNA

Company donates to 37 Military Hospital

Accra, Aug. 13, GNA – A private company and consultants for the National Communication Authority (NCA), Global Group, on Friday donated medical items valued at GH¢58,903 to the Paediatric Department of the 37Military Hospital.

The items were made up of a portable x-ray machine, one ultrasound machine, incubator bio-chemistry, paediatric neonatal stethoscope, chest tube, exchange transfusion trays, bedside lockers and paediatric neonatal ventilator.

A statement issued in Accra on Saturday by the Public Relations Directorate of the Ghana Armed Forces said Ms Vanessa Opoku, a representative of the company, presented the items to the Hospital.

She said one of their corporate social responsibilities was to help the Hospital and that the company was making the donation to reduce child mortality.

The Director General of Medical Services of the Ghana Armed Forces, Commodore R.M.L. Sowa, who received the items, expressed appreciation for the kind gesture and expressed the hope that other benevolent organisations and individuals would emulate them.

In a speech read for him, the Minister of defence, Lieutenant General Joseph Henry Smith, said the 37 Military Hospital had shifted from being a purely tertiary Hospital for personnel of the Armed Forces and their dependants to a general national public Hospital.

He said due to the competing interests and commitments of the Hospital, its budgetary allocations had not been adequate.

It had therefore been relying on the goodwill of benevolent organisations for support.

He said even though the cost of the items was huge, the real value lay in the number of children whose lives would be saved.