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The 37 Military Hospital, under the auspices of the Ghana Armed Forces Medical Services, has launched the 2018 edition of the Military Nightingale’s week celebration in Accra with an assurance of quality care delivery.

Brigadier General Michael Akwasi Yeboah Agyapong, the Commander of 37 Military Hospital, who gave the assurance, said the facility was going to improve on what it has been doing, through improved communication with patients and reception of patients.

He was speaking in an interview at the launch of the 2018 Military Nightingales’ week on the theme: “Access to Safe and Quality Care: Nurses and Midwives Leading the Advocacy”.

He said there would be a number improvements that patients and visitors would see in terms health care delivery because management was poised to train and monitor nurses to ensure that the right things were done.

This year’s week-long Military Nightingales’ commenced with a health walk to demonstrate the essence of regular exercise and to create awareness among the public.

The health walk was part of activities earmarked for the week, which also include a two-day workshop on various topics as well as awards and closing ceremony on Friday.

About 65 nurses took part in the health walk, which started from the Hospital through the Liberation Road towards Airport Police Station, to the Association Road towards Kawukudi and back to the Hospital, where they were taken through some aerobics.

The week celebration will be climaxed with a Thanksgiving Service on Sunday, September 9 at the 37 Presby Methodist Church.

Brig Gen Akwasi Yeboah Agyapong said the annual event, which was instituted by the facility six years ago, was in honour of Florence Nightingale, the Mother of Nursing and a celebrated English social reformer, and statistician, who laid the foundations of the nursing profession by organising the treatment and tending of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War.

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820 and was part of a wealthy family, Nightingale defied the expectations of the time and pursued what she saw as her God-given calling of nursing.

During the Crimean War, she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, greatly reducing the death count.

Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform, and in 1860, she established St. Thomas' Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses and later died on August 13, 1910, in London.

The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Sardinia.

The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire.

The French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church.