A team working for President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s charity here, spent much of Wednesday and Thursday last week, giving out assorted medical goods to three of Lofa County’s major healthcare centers in Liberia. They included Konia, Kolahun, Foya and Vahun Hospitals.
The charity’s boss, Hon. Jackson K. George Jr., had a week earlier, prior to his travel to the United States, approved the lifting of a batch of assorted medical goods to the referenced facilities located some 200, or more miles, north of the country.
This goodwill gesture by the JNB Foundation had come as a result of a plea for medical donations to these hospitals by the Lofa County regional chief County Health Officer (CHO), Dr. Moses UJoe Saah Weidehgan. These give-aways were based on Dr. Weidehgan’s earlier assessment needs for each hospital.
Medical items delivered to each of the three hospitals were much the same: boxes of dressing set, first aid kits, syringes, IV Cipro 200, IV Metro 200, thermometer, surgical gowns, hand gloves, urine bags, insulin and Lab cups.
Konia Health Center, aside from packages given to it, also received 1 hospital bed plus 1 delivery bed (items badly in need by hospitals and clinics there), while Foya Health Center got 1 delivery bed. Packages were based on previous assessment needs of beneficiaries.
The Lofa border town of Worsonga-not listed by the foundation earlier for donation on this trip-benefited, getting 3 sets of smaller medical beds. This happened because the town, also home to President Boakai, has been inundated with patient influx from Liberia and Sierra Leone, lately.
During our team’s visit to the town’s only clinic Wednesday, for instance, two women at advanced stages of their pregnancy were spotted crouching in two separate tiny beds at the clinic’s maternity ward while a third slept on the floor due to the lack of beds.
Dr. Moses F. Momolu, Clinical Supervisor for Worsonga Clinic stated the clinic had been unable to serve or cope with the increasing number of women especially pregnant women arriving here weekly and needing natal care due to the lack of beds.
The situation, he maintained, was compounded by the arrival of additional three pregnant women just days before the JNB Foundation crew and the Lofa Medical Health team headed by Dr. Moses Weidehgan went in.
With such a timely donation of the medical beds, health workers at the clinic said they would be in a better position to now “hold” the six women there till they give birth. The beds were given out along with mattresses.
Like other hospitals in the region where the foundation’s team visited, Deputy Executive Director for JNB Foundation Mr. Henry Saah Flanpor, assured nurses and doctors his charity would work assiduously with the districts to get clinics fully equipped.
The visiting teams were unable to reach Vahun to drop off the region’s medical packages due to time factor. They therefore gave the packages to CHO Dr. Moses UJoe Saah Weidehgan for onward delivery.
Below is a pictorial from the Lofa donations
Text & Photographs by James Kokulo Fasuekoi/JNB Foundation Comm. Dept. Director
