Olam Ghana, a leading food and agri-business and one of Ghana’s biggest cocoa buying agencies reaching over 180,000 cocoa farmers, has donated a consignment of medical supplies to the Greater Accra Regional Hospital and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR) in support of the government’s efforts to curb the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in the country.

Olam’s donation is specifically intended to help control the impact of the disease on frontline health personnel and includes examination gloves, surgical gloves, nose masks, surgical face shields, disposable aprons and overalls goggles, N95 respirators, secondary containers for sample collection, hand sanitizers, other PPE items and cartons of Nutrifoods biscuits.

Whereas the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (also known as the Ridge Hospital) was the first medical facility in the country to be designated as a Case Management Centre to deal with the outbreak of COVID 19, KCCR is one of two lead agencies of the Ministry of Health which provide diagnostic confirmation for the pandemic in Ghana.

The medical supplies were presented to the authorities of the two medical institutions by a management delegation from Olam which included Mr. Kenneth Antwi, National Head, Human Resources and Mr. Eric Botwe, Business Head, Olam Cocoa.

Mr Kenneth Antwi said: “As a manufacturer of food for the population, Olam Ghana takes a serious view of public health and safety and   we have been moved by the relentless efforts of medical and health professionals to stem the spread of COVID 19 throughout the country.

“The fight against the spread of this disease is certainly a collective one and not that of the government or health workers alone; what we need to do together to subdue the effects of this pandemic is to abide strictly by all the directives provided by medical experts and the government.”

Dr. Emmanuel Srofenyoh, Medical Director at the GARTH who jointly received the supplies with Prof. Richard Phillips, Scientific Director at KCCR, highly commended Olam Ghana for its socially responsible gesture and entreated others in the corporate community to emulate Olam’s example.

“These items you see here are all very valuable supplies for the battle ahead…and this is a battle we have to fight and win collectively. But we must understand that the treatment of COVID 19 is expensive because a lot of the material we use must be discarded immediately after use, which is why we consider support from organisations like Olam as most welcome,” Dr Srofenyo said.

Prof. Phillips, on his part, expressed profound gratitude to Olam Ghana for thinking about the labs behind the treatment of COVID 19.

“All too often, people tend to forget about the work of the diagnostic centres, but it is a relief to realise that Olam has remembered us and for this we are most grateful; over the period, we have been busy processing COVID 19 patient samples from the Middle and Northern belt of Ghana including Ashanti, Northern, Bono East, Upper East, Upper West, Central and Western Region,” Prof. Phillips said.

KCCR is a joint venture between the Ministry of Health, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Bernhard-Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany.