By Comfort Sena Fetrie, GNA
Tamale, Jan 08, GNA – Dr Dominic
Konadu-Yeboah, the Head of Trauma and Orthopaedics at the Komfo Anorkye
Teaching Hospital (KATH), has disclosed that an estimated five million people
die annually out of injuries from road accidents globally.
Most of such deaths occur in low and middle
income countries, including Ghana.
Trauma resulting from road traffic crashes
is one of the leading causes of deaths and disabilities in Ghana and often
involve young people within the productive age of 15 to 49 years.
Dr Konadu-Yeboah said this at the beginning
of a three-day training workshop organized by the Ghana College of Physicians
and Surgeons for journalists from Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions,
on how to report on Trauma and Orthopedic cases.
It was organized in collaboration with AO
Alliance, a development non-profit non-governmental organization and aimed at
improving care for the injured in middle and low-income countries.
The session was also to help achieve AO
Alliances project objective. The project is dubbed: “Paediatric Fracture
Solutions of Ghana Project”.
The project seeks to reduce and prevent disability,
morbidity and mortality from paediatrics trauma related cases through
education, and improving clinical care provided by doctors, nurses, allied
healthcare workers, first interveners and primary care givers.
Dr Konadu-Yeboah stressed the need for journalists
to help intensify education at preventing road traffic accidents to minimise it
impact on Ghana and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) three
and six.
The goals focus on reducing road traffic
injuries and deaths by 2020.
He said Ghana’s health care systems must be
re-organised to place trauma care high on the health agenda in order to hit the
SDG targets.
Dr Francis Odei-Ansong, the Trauma and
Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Tema General Hospital, said to enhance appropriate
trauma care, the AO alliance has established residency training centres at Cape
Coast and Tamale Teaching Hospitals.
They are equipped among other things with
logistics to establish independent departments.
He said 240 children have so far benefitted
from the project in both KATH and the Cape Coast Hospitals.
Journalists were encouraged to use their
media platforms to advocate and create public awareness of trauma cases in the
country to minimize its occurrence.
GNA
