In February 2021, almost a year after Ghana recorded its first cases of the Coronavirus pandemic, some hospitals begun to report lack of adequate ventilators and a shortage of oxygen to attend to patients.
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, Ridge, for instance was reported to have run out of oxygen and called on donors to provide them with ventilators.
This was a result of the increasing number of critical care and severe cases of COVID-19 reporting at the Facility.
Dr Emmanuel Ahiable, the COVID-19 Case Management Lead at the Hospital, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an Interview as part of the Journalists for Human Rights Project on “Mobilizing the Media in Fighting COVID-19” that critical care beds at the ICU was occupied since January 08, 2021, with high demand for oxygen.
Consequently, the ICU was said to be in urgent need of higher volumes of oxygen as each patient at the ICU required 15 liters of oxygen per minute, with patients staying on oxygen for at least two weeks.
Dr Ahiable said the situation was alarming in the beginning of 2021 because most cases referred to the facility were in critical condition.
He said after January 8, the unit expanded its eight-bed facility to 16, as it received more referrals from across the Greater Accra Region.
He said 20 out of the number recovered and discharged at the time were made up of 11 males, six females and a five-year-old boy died while 13 are still on admission.
Dr Ahiable said the spike in severe cases was worrying because more pregnant women were being brought to the ICU in critical conditions.
“Last month alone, we recorded seven cases involving pregnant women, one of them died hereafter delivering a 32 week old baby by herself,” he said.
Dr Ahiable said the Unit, therefore, urgently needed ventilators (Halminton C1) because patients who needed high volumes of oxygen recovered quickly on ventilators.
He noted that the Unit was also running out of COVID-19 test kits with more people walking in to get tested.
Dr Ahiable, therefore, appealed to government and private institutions to support the Facility in the fight against the pandemic by donating ventilators and oxygen to the unit.
A ventilator is a device that supports or recreates the process of breathing by pumping air into the lungs.
Sometimes, people refer to it as a vent or breathing machine.
Doctors use ventilators when a person cannot breathe adequately on their own because they are undergoing general anesthesia or have an illness that affects their breathing.
There are different types of ventilators, and each provides varying levels of support, the type a doctor uses will depend on a person’s condition.
Ventilators play an important role in saving lives, in both hospitals and ambulances.
At a medical fair held in Accra on December 5, 2022, the Academic City University College supported by iSTEAM Academy Limited and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, announced the development of a local ventilator in Ghana.
The development of the ventilator was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.
The fair was on the theme: “Building Local Capacity in Medical Technology,” and provided a platform for the exhibition of products and services offered by the healthcare industry while highlighting Ghana’s innovation in medical technology.
Prof. Fred McBagonluri, Founding President of Academic City University College and Co-Founder of iSTEAM, said ventilators became an essential commodity when the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world.
“Ventilators became an essential commodity that saved many lives. Unfortunately, Ghana did not have enough of these lifesavers because, while some were available, they were prohibitively expensive,” he said.
Prof McBagonluri said the situation necessitated him to collaborate with GIZ and to secure funding to develop a low-cost ventilator in Ghana.
“The plan was for Ghana and Africa to develop their own version of low-cost ventilators tailored to its terrain, using off-the-shelf and locally available material under a project dubbed Locovent4Africa,” he said.
The project, he said, aims to develop, manufacture, and distribute low-cost ventilators using locally available and off-the-shelf materials in developing countries to assist healthcare professionals in treating patients suffering from acute respiratory diseases because of COVID-19 as well as other respiratory infections.
Prof McBagonluri said iSTEAM, an innovative STEAM-based education enterprise undertook the task to establish local production capabilities for the low-cost, locally adaptive, and non-invasive medical ventilator to serve, treat and save patients’ lives.
The COVID-19 pandemic despite its effects on the global economy and health system has ignited the need to produce local medical devices in Africa for Africa and Ghana is leading the way.
