Later today, a giant leap will be made towards saving the lives of innocent women and children who are appointed to die at the Mother and Child unit of Ghana’s second biggest referral facility-Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).
Seeds will be sown, big and small, and in every shape or form to arrest the heartbreaking cycle of child death at KATH.
A woman, the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, backed by the Multimedia Group would lead an army of philanthropists and corporate institutions to drive the campaign to end the many avoidable deaths at the Maternity Block of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
It is a call she has embraced, a daring challenge undertaken to end the ignominious debacle of child deaths and to put smiles back on the faces of many women who have all but given up on having a seamless child birth.
Every woman who enters into a labour ward is optimistic of returning with the biggest reward she could ever give her family.
But those who enter KATH’s Mother and Child Unit have an extra emotional and psychological trauma of pushing away the thoughts of dying themselves or losing their babies even before or after the final push of glory.
This is because for many years, the unit which has been a place for procreation, a refuge for joy and happiness for families and an orchestra that produces rhythmic sounds of crying of babies, has also on several occasions, produced sounds of crying adults who did everything right to enjoy the fruit of child birth but reaped the pain of child and maternal deaths.
They came gleaming with hope but left with a grimace of hopelessness, dreading the adventure of going through another nine month miracle of child birth that may never be.
Such is the horrifying uncertainty families go through anytime the hour comes for a pregnant mother to give birth at the mother and child unit of KATH.
For years families lost their wives and children in silence, cried in silence and went back home in silence hoping it will never happen again but nine months later they returned queuing in the same congested labour ward and going through the same delivering-to-die-template because of poor and inadequate facilities at the KATH.
A documentary by Joy News’ Seth Kwame Boateng early last month captured in pictures, sounds and words the pain families go through, the frustrations doctors nurses and other health workers endure each day attempting to deliver and save mother and child.
It emerged four babies die each other day at the KATH and on bad days the numbers rose to about ten.
A 43-year-old maternity ward has been left standing, uncompleted as families count the loss of their generations.
It is to solve this unconscionable cycle that the First Lady together with the Multimedia group are organising a fund raising event at the office of Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo at 5:00pm Thursday.
The event is to raise Ȼ10 million for a one storey maternity ward at KATH to ease the congestion as government works to complete the 43-year old structure.
It doesn’t matter how much you give. Any amount is neither too big or too small once it is channeled to saving the lives of boy or girl who may likely be Ghana’s next president.