Underground Mining Alliance (UMA), a contractor of AngloGold Ashanti on Friday, 13th September, 2019, donated a Siare Siaretron 4000 ICU Intensive Care Ventilator to the AngloGold Ashanti Health Foundation. The equipment which costs GHc125,000 was handed over to the hospital by Mr. Alf Garnett, the site project manager of UMA.
Speaking before the presentation, Dr. Paakwesi Cromwell, Executive Director of AngloGold Ashanti Health Foundation said the equipment comes as a response to an appeal made to UMA to support the hospital equipment upgrades for the emergency department.
“We appeal to all other contractors to come to our support”, he added.
Senior Sustainability Manager of AngloGold Ashanti, Mr. Emmanuel Baidoo, who represented the Obuasi Mine, thanked UMA for the kind gesture and called on other contractors to emulate their example.
“On behalf of the Managing Director, I want to convey our sincere gratitude to you, UMA, for the kind gesture and we encourage other contractors to emulate your example”, he said.
A ventilator is a machine that helps a person to breath. When a person has a condition that can cause breathing difficulties, including respiratory illness, head injury, cardiac conditions and drug overdoses, ventilators are of utmost importance in patient management.
The Siaretron 4000 lung ventilator is equiped with a TFT 12” colour monitor displaying the curves of pressure, flow, volume, the loops of breathing parameters, the trends and the ventilation parameters.
Dr. Ernest Opoku, Emergency Physician Specialist and Head of AGAHF Emergency, said the equipment will help save lives at the hospital.
“This ventilator could help provide ventilation for adults, paediatric and neonatal patients. It also provides food oxygen for the patient”, he added.
The ventilator is equipped with a flow and pressure trigger and provides the most advanced volume-controlled ventilation modalities, pressure-controlled ventilation modalities, pressure supported modalities, non-invasive ventilation, drug nebulizer and manual ventilation.
UMA project Manager, Mr. Alf Garnett, added that the donation is part of their Corporate Social Responsibility to the community and they hope to do more.
“Out of the current 316 employees at UMA, 260 of them are Ghanaians. We expect to increase our workforce to 574 and most of them will be Ghanaians”, he said.