By James Kokulo Fasuekoi|Director of Communications Department
When a team from President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s JNB Foundation arrived at Bomi County’s Tubmanburg Government Hospital Thursday, Nov. 20, and the hospital’s administrator Joseph Kanneh was informed, he walked out of his office laughing, greeting and hugging the guests. And there was a reason why.
It’s simply because Kanneh’s own facility, like the JFK Hospital in the capital, is among the highest recipients of medical goods donated to local healthcare facilities by the president’s charity between 2024-2025.
Mr. Kanneh couldn’t stop heaping praises to the charity itself and its founder, President Joseph Boakai Sr. the assistance they have given Bomi Government Hospital. “President Boakai has brought donations here; the foundation [too] has brought donations,” he said with some degree of excitement, as he prepared to take our team on a brief tour of the hospital.
Questioned by our team’s leader, Mr. Henry Saa Flanpor as to whether a string of donations made to his facility by the JNB Foundation were somehow benefiting the hospital and the hundreds of patients that arrive at the hospital weekly, he quickly responded with a great joy, saying, “Yes, things are getting better.”
“All of our lab materials are in good condition and working well,” he said. Mr. Kanneh was referencing modern-high-tech equipment such as incubators plus State-of-The Art X-ray machines this foundation donated to it, in addition to a dozen other leading hospitals, including Phebe (Bong), Tellewonyan (Lofa), and Jackson F. Doe (Tappita, Nimba), in 2024-2025.
Until the JNB Foundation’s multiple donations to the facility, which began almost immediately after President Boakai took power in January 2024, this hospital, one of the oldest medical centers in the region, situated in the old mining town, wasn’t in a better shape. Its old lab equipment had been virtually in bad shape, and its few functioning machines, nurses said, often malfunctioned in the middle of a heated job.
As a result, the hospital staff for years went through a painstaking process of first collecting patients’ specimens from all over this region, then had them shipped to the capital, Monrovia, through treacherous roads, and then waited probably for another week or more to get results.
“You see, good leadership brings good things,” Joseph Kanneh, pointed out Thursday, referring to the current leadership of the President of the Republic of Liberia, led by President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr.
Though this visit by the foundation staff Thursday was an impromptu one, the team also surprised Mr. Kanneh and presented him a bunch of assorted medical items that they had packaged and taken along for the hospital. These included disposable and surgical gowns, syringes, as well as disposable needles among many other things.
Meanwhile, a day earlier, on Wednesday, senior hospital administrator at the Jackson F. Doe Hospital in Nimba, Mr. Julius N. Gleekia received a list of ten medical items from the JNB Foundation’s boss, Hon Jackson K. George Jr. It was a part of the charity’s ongoing kind donations to hospitals here. They included Compound Sodium, SN Sodium, Ciprofloxacine, Metro, Nose Masks and surgical gowns. Some were given in bulks of several cartoons each.
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