Ghana’s first heart surgeon, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng says he intends building up to three cardiothoracic centres in Ghana.

Presently, Ghana has only one cardio centre, which was built through the personal efforts of Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, after he had repatriated his surgical skills back home from Germany.

He told Errol Barnett on CNN’s African Voices that unlike the Western part of the world where heart diseases occur mostly as a result of affluent lives, heart problems in Africa are inextricably linked to poverty.

The failed presidential aspirant said he hopes to rally support and funds to establish, at least, three more cardiothoracic centres for the West African country in five years.

Prof. Frimpong-Boateng said considering current statistics which show that one percent of all children born in Ghana will develop one heart problem or the other, it is pertinent to have many more cardio centres to save more lives.

The former Chief Executive Officer of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, which hosts the country’s only cardiothoracic centre, said: “I may not be at the cardiothoracic centre [anymore], but I’m involved in trying to set up heart centres in Ghana. I want to see two or three heart centres in Ghana in the next five years”.

Prof-Frimpong-Boateng says though he does not readily have funds to undertake the project, he hopes philanthropists will partner him to realise that dream.

“…I don’t know where the money will come from, but maybe somebody will hear about Frimpong-Boateng [and] what he wants to do and help us because I think that, with my experience, we can build at a minimum cost”, he told CNN.

He said he has started one of the centres in the country’s Ashanti regional capital, Kumasi, and hopes philanthropists “help us with resources” to finish it, so that poor people in the sub-region could have access to heart surgery services.