Dr Cephas Ayugane, a Principal Dental Surgeon at Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) has expressed worry about the frequent cases of facial fracture in the Northern Region, due to fatal crashes.
He said the TTH is unable to treat complex cases and related conditions such as facial tumour, which falls in the category of maxillofacial conditions due to logistical constraints.
Dr Ayugane told the Ghana News Agency in Tamale on Monday that most patients with complex conditions are often referred to the dental centre at Komfo-Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi.
He said most of the patients fail to make it due to financial constraints and appealed to donors to help the hospital to address the challenge.
�Averagely our clinic records 50...dental related cases daily and the statistics show that facial facture are higher than the others.
�The dental clinic is expanding gradually and we are in need of basic operating unit, instruments and equipment such as dental chair to attend to the diverse cases,� he said.
Dr Ayugane said aside the challenge of human resource, the only outreach vehicle for the centre had broken down.
�With the outreach van we are able to visit communities in the Upper East and Upper West Regions to offer basic services to people and educate them on dentition...but now we are constrained,� he said.
The Surgeon announced that Nyarko Cleft�Plate Care in partnership with TTH intends to establish an ultra-modern dental centre in Tamale to serve Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions and the neighbouring countries.
He said a number of patients from the three regions seek treatment at the short term cleft repair projects such as the operation smile group, which was organised in Accra.
�Based on that Madam Mary Obeng, a social worker in the United Kingdom and a team of surgeons are partnering the hospital to institute a dental centre to serve the ever growing dental related cases especially cleft to ease client burden of waiting for a charity project before having the conditions treated,� he said.
Dr Ayugane appealed to the government and its development partners to assist TTH to get equipment for facial fracture and also support the establishment of the dental centre.
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