The Management of the Eastern Regional Hospital has inaugurated the first renal dialysis centre at the Hospital in Koforidua on Friday to provide critical healthcare services to patients, especially those with kidney diseases.

It would also improve the health and well-being of people with kidney diseases, initiating and receiving dialysis therapy with a complication-free and a completely restorative kidney health.

Wife and family of the late Dr George Ofori Atta, who suffered kidney disease, in collaboration with BDAC Ghana Foundation, an NGO, donated three dialysis machines to the centre in his memory.

At the inaugural ceremony, the Medical Director of the Hospital, Dr Arko Akoto-Appaw, said the centre had come as a relief to many patients who, hitherto,had to trek to Accra to access such services since the hospital was not rendering such services.

He said the establishment of the centre would prevent the referral of such cases and would improve access to critical healthcare in the hospital.

For his part, Dr Ofori Boadu, the Director of Institutional Care Division of Ghana Health Service (GHS), who represented the Director General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, revealed that “even though non-communicable diseases have been with us, education on it has been low and neglected.”

According to him, such diseases were on the ascendancy and there was the need to educate the populace on diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, adding that if these are not managed well could lead to a person ending up in the dialysis centre since such diseases were a cause of kidney diseases.

He said the GHS was proud of the management of the Eastern Regional Hospital for their enthusiasm to improve healthcare services, adding that their request to get more staff would be considered.

Dr Boadu called on the hospital to train some of their staff to take care of dialysis in the centre and advised the staff to also show love and care to people who came to the centre to access their services.

The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Seth Acheampong, for his part stated that hypertension and diabetes were the most common causes of kidney failures, adding that it was anticipated the trend would worsen overtime given that the two diseases were now being diagnosed in younger persons.

The wife of the late Dr George Ofori-Atta, Mrs Felicia Ofori-Atta, expressed the hope that the dialysis machines would be of great help to many who were faced with renal diseases.

“Seeing my husband battle with kidney failure has been a terrible experience and after his death I and others who supported me decided to do this donation to alleviate others from such terrible experience,” she explained.