Fuo community hospital, a private health facility in the Sagnarigu municipality has been upgraded to covid 19 testing center for the five regions of the north.
Under its current status, the residents now have an alternative for testing covid and having their result within 45 minutes at a subsidized price of 250 cedis.
The facility has installed a rapid antigen test machine with service charge of a test pegging at 200 cedis. Also, installed was Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) which results most airlines during covid pandemic demands from travelers.
The cost of both antigens and PRC test in the nation’s capital-Accra is in the range of 400 and 600 cedis. The management of Fuo hospital in partnering with M-pharma, a pharmaceutical and health service delivery company in Ghana believes their partnership to equipped the facility will go a long to help address diagnostic challenges in the north.
The hospital which was established 2012 is the first private hospital to have ventured into the covid testing in the northern sector with capacity to carry out DNA test.
Hitherto, it was only public health laboratory at TTH that carries out covid testing. According to the Fuo hospital management, upgrading the facility forms part of their contribution to helping the government fight covid 19.
Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Alhaji Iddi Sumaila told Zaa News at the commissioning ceremony that the additional service was in two folds; humanitarian grounds and also to enhance their business in the region.
Alhaji Sumaila said the people in northern Ghana also deserve good things as it is in the south. “we realized that anything good that comes remains in the southern zone, we decided that we also deserve have some of these things in the north’’ Alhaji Sumaila explained.
The hospital he explained is still negotiating with their partners who he described as very flexible to further reduce the price of reagents which is very costly to enable needy people in the north to access their services.
’’The Antigens results comes less than an hour and 10 tests can be done within an hour and most cases that comes here are just for local needs but we have added PRC to cater for the traveling public’’ Alhaji Sumaila explained.
The hospital Alhaji Sumaila said is owned by the people and destitute from the community without health insurance have treated free of charge.
He commended the chiefs and people of Fou for demonstrating that they truly own the facility and urged them to continue to keep faith in the hospital.
Deputy Director Northern Regional Health in charge of clinical care, Dr Baba Abukari Braimah said the private sector joining covid fight, especially testing regime will improve the region’s performance.
Dr Braimah explained that the more results delays, the tendency of the virus spreading is also high because people whose samples are being taken cannot continue to wait at home for about 2 weeks for their results to come and they end up mingling with people.