The Dabaa Project

Before the inception of Ubuntu Through Health in 2010, HOPE4HEALTH played an instrumental role in funding the development of the desperately needed Hope Medical Centre in the rural area of Dabaa, Ghana. This was a project run in collaboration with The Watson Association. For a country with almost 24 million people there are only around 1500 health care facilities and for rural areas there is extremely limited access to healthcare. Patients in these areas either rely on traditional African medicine or travel great distances for care. Undoubtedly, this has contributed to some of the countries shocking health statistics. In 2008, malaria, a curable illness, continued to be the disease claiming the highest number of victims.

Dabaa is a small rural town 1-2 hours drive (depending on the weather – dry or wet on unsealed roads) outside one of the biggest cities in Ghana, Kumasi. This is a vast distance considering very few people in Ghana have cars and there is limited public transport. Kumasi itself has almost two million people and one large teaching hospital. The Hope Medical Centre in Dabaa opened in mid 2012 and contains an operating theatre and birthing suite, a pharmacy, administration and 20 short stay beds. It is fully staffed and funded by the Ghanaian government. The Dabaa hospital services the surrounding heavily populated towns and outer Kumasi suburbs.

Ubuntu Through Health has continued HOPE4HEALTH’s support for the Hope Medical Centre, and is focused on assisting the hospital to reach it’s full potential in providing medical care to the people of Dabaa and the surrounding communities.

In April 2013, Ubuntu Through Health helped fund and pack a shipping container full of second hand medical equipment that was sent over to the Hope Medical Centre. This was in partnership with the Revive Foundation, an organisation set up to give a “second life” to medical equipment no longer used in QLD hospitals. The container included anaesthetic machines, sterilizers, an operating table and more.

In August 2013, Ubuntu Through Health hosted The Ubuntu Through Health Dinner in support of the Hope Medical Centre. Funds raised on the evening will be used to purchase an ambulance specifically designed to service the surrounding communities. The “ambulance” needs to be a multi-function vehicle. It needs to carry a stretchered patient up to 2 hours in traffic on muddy pot-holed roads to the major hospital in Kumasi if Dabaa cannot cope with the pathology presenting. It will be the transport vehicle to pick up pharmacy and surgical supplies and to go to the dump or pick up new furniture. It needs to be the outreach vehicle to run vaccination, maternity and other clinics in surrounding towns.