UEW Clinic Makes Modest Strides

Medical staff at the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) Clinic have had a breakthrough by successfully carrying out three surgeries at the facility. The team successfully performed two breast surgeries and a twin hernia repair. This is the first of its kind in over a decade and the first time multiple surgeries have been performed in a single day at the facility.

This development is in line with the Clinic's effort to broaden the scope of its offerings and make the facility accessible to the university and the communities in its vicinity for 24-hour, seven-day-per-week healthcare services

 Dr. Yambah (left) and a colleague practitioner undertaking the operation

Shedding light on the development, Ag. Director of Health Services, Dr. John Kanyiri Yambah, said that the surgeries were done at the university health centre in realisation of its strategic aim to provide comprehensive health services to the university community and its environs. 

"We want to get into a situation where all services are provided in-house. Every healthcare facility is trying to meet the sustainable development goals in healthcare. That is, increasing the accessibility and acceptability of healthcare while imposing no financial burden on the health seeker. And so, surgical care is an important part of medical care and should not be left out of the services we provide here. Hitherto, it would have been referred elsewhere, but now we have the basic resources to be able to do it here.

“The present set-up of the university clinic is such that we have a theatre, an anesthetic machine, and a theatre bed. We just had to repurpose them, sterilise our equipment and put the theatre in a workable condition.  We’ve had several of our staff exposed to the surgical field with our follow-through on surgical referrals over the years. Some of the staff came with us to get hands-on experience. So, when the time came for us to act independently, we just had to rely on our own resources. Everybody who helped that day was from the university clinic,” he explained.

Dr. John Yambah explaining the development to the staff from the Media Relations Unit

Dr. Yambah spoke about the facility's readiness to offer clinical psychology services to students, comprehensive antenatal, perinatal, and postnatal care, eye and dental care, as well as other services to clients, to create a one-stop shop for medical services at the facility.

“Once you walk in here, you are walking back home healthier and happier,” he said.

The Director of Health Services indicated that the Clinic is nascent but could do more. He talked about the situation where specialists from elsewhere could be brought in to provide certain services when the expertise can’t be found in-house and the immediate efforts to push for a 24-bed capacity clinic up from eight in readiness for the soon-to-be-completed 100-bed capacity hospital, and again, the need to move into specialisation in anticipation of the expanded services to be rendered.

“The new facility is coming up. Deadlines have been given, so we are hopeful that by the end of the year, the facility will be handed over to us so that we can work in a very dignified environment. We are also urging management to push the right buttons for the contractors to finish on schedule.

“Almost everyone practising here is a generalist. That fits into the earlier plan of running a day clinic, but as we are expanding our services, we probably have to develop our skills in-house and through external training and add on some specialists. We will need a new state-of-the-art theatre and ward equipment," he intimated.
 

The Ag. Director and his staff in a jubilant mood after successfully completing all three surgeries

Dr. Yambah expressed gratitude to his staff for the teamwork and support that led to the modest strides being made at the Clinic. He was particularly grateful to the Management of the university for the support thus far and urged them to facilitate requests from the clinic on their desks.

He assured the clinic’s clients of the best healthcare delivery, an outcome anchored on teamwork. "We’re looking at a situation where, when you talk of healthcare in and out of Winneba, you won’t go anywhere beyond the university clinic or hospital," he said.

Sections of the three surgeries