The Ghana Nuts Limited, an agro-processing company in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo Region, at the weekend presented a Mercedes Benz Sprinter 312D Ambulance valued at 27,000 US dollars to the Chiraa Health Centre in the Sunyani West District.
Mr Prince Obeng-Asante, Deputy Managing Director of the Company, said aside of meeting its social responsibility to communities in the catchment area, the Company was motivated to donate the ambulance to facilitate and enhance the activities of the centre.
He said the Company was established to assist in rural wealth creation through the Youth in Agriculture Programme and requested the community to release 2000 acres of land to enable the youth to engage in groundnuts and soybean cultivation.
Mr Obeng-Asante said the Company was ready to buy the produce on the farm after pre-financing them through the provision of seedlings and farm implements.
He stressed that the community needed to generate its own wealth to empower the people financially and economically and that would be a reliable way of achieving such a feat.
Mr Obeng-Asante said the Company had paid for a comprehensive insurance cover on the ambulance and would also bear the driver's salary for one year and advised against the use of the ambulance to convey corpses.
Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, urged the people to patronize the National Health Insurance Scheme, reiterating that the government was committed to the implementation of the proposed policy of one-time premium payment of the scheme by December 2010.
He charged the District Chief Executive and the Sunyani West Assembly to include the cost of face-lifting the centre's compound in the assembly's 2010 budget estimates to ensure the provision of quality health service to the people.
Mr Kwadwo Adjei-Darko, former Member of Parliament for Sunyani West, urged parents and guardians to ensure the proper upbringing of their children for them to become useful citizens.
He suggested the need for the community to take up the management of some locally initiated projects including a library complex and a community centre and plough back the proceeds for further developmental projects.
Mrs Dora Opoku, Medical Assistant in charge of the Centre, said it handled cases of malaria, upper respiratory infection, anaemia, snake bites, accidents, deliveries as well as ante-natal and post-natal care.
She said the donation of the ambulance was timely and significant because of "Post Partum Hemorrhage," snake bites, accidents and severe anaemia cases that were mostly referred to the regional hospital in Sunyani.
Mrs Opoku said the centre had 30 beds for its maternity cases and both male and female admissions.
She therefore appealed to the government to re-equip the centre's laboratory and the tile the maternity unit.
Mr Opoku Danso, Chairman of the Centre's Interim Management
Committee (IMC), said the centre was opened as a health post in 1962 and upgraded to a Health Centre in 1968.
He called for an expansion of the centre into either a poly-clinic or hospital as it served a lot of communities including Ayigbe, Subriso number one and two, Bafokrom, Mankrango, Ahyiayemu and Buoku.
The IMC Chairman mentioned the location of a public toilet so close to the centre, re-wiring of the entire place and lack of a mechanized borehole and fencing as some of the problems facing it.
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