SMEC, an interna-tional engineering consultancy firm, has donated an ultrasound scan machine worth GH₵ 103,600 to the Ga Central Municipal Clinic to advance maternal health delivery in the Ga Central Municipality.
The gesture, which formed part of SMEC's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), will help the clinic cater for the 50 pregnant women that access the facility monthly as it was the first ultrasound machine at any of the health facilities in the municipality.
The Ga Central Municipal Clinic is located at Santa Maria in Accra and offers health care ser-vices to 300,000 residents with the absence of a municipal hospital or polyclinic.
The West African Manager for SMEC, Jose Fernandes, who presented the machine to Dr Esther Odame-Asiedu, Municipal Director of Health for Ga Cen-tral, at a brief ceremony in Accra, described the gesture as a fulfilling one for the company.
"As a company, our activities are related to people and the community because we work in infrastructure, housing, water, power, but this is special because of the function this equipment is going to perform and this makes us very proud," he disclosed.
He added that being an inter-national company with global footprints, CSR projects had to be lobbied for, but Ghana was special in their scheme of things and they would continue to make a strong case to shareholders on bringing major CSR projects to Ghana.
Dr Odame-Asiedu, on her part, explained that the machine would curb the practice of pregnant women travelling out of the mu-nicipality to check the viability of their pregnancy and also to revert any death threatening situations in pregnancies due to early detection.
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"The donation has come at the right time because we don't have this machine in any of our facilities and it would help our pregnant women very much. They would avoid having to go far distances to access other facilities outside the district to get this particular service, we are grateful," she said.
As a way of expanding the uni-versal health coverage, she called for an upgrade of the health facili-ties in the municipality to include a municipal hospital, polyclinic and health centres that would meet the health needs of the populace and halt residents from travelling long distances outside the district to access advanced health care.
SMEC has operated in Gha-na since 1976 and established a permanent office in Accra in 1998. SMEC's first project was a feasibility Study and Detailed Design services for the Bui Hy-droelectric Power Project. Since then, SMEC's project experience in Ghana has spread across var-ious sectors of Ghana's growing economy.
