Photos: New Mother and Baby Unit at KATH ready for commissioning

The new ultramodern Mother and Baby Unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital is ready for commisioning.

The facility, built in 5 months will house the Maternity, Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive Care units.

The facility is expected to help bring down the high mortality rate at Ghana's second-biggest Teaching Hospital as it will help address the problem of congestion.

A JoyNews Special Assignment documentary by Seth Kwame Boateng which highlighted the needless deaths of mothers and babies at the hospital mainly due to congestion is the reason this facility has been built to save lives.

The First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo and her Foundation partnered The Multimedia Group, the parent company of Joy FM, Adom FM, Asempa, Luv FM amongst others, to raise funds for the project.

The new facility,  with a  total built area of 2,722 square meters will provide the staff and patients adequate space for different types of procedures.

This will help reduce infections which caused sickness and increased child mortality.

The birthing beds in the new facility are nine, compared to two in the previous one and an additional theatre has been added to the existing two, making them three. There is also an increase from the current capacity of 4 to 12 simultaneous births.

Cots and incubators would shoot up simultaneously from the existing situation where four, sometimes eight infants share a cot, breeding cross contamination and cross infection.

One hundred and thirty (130)  cots and up to 15 incubators are being provided to ensure single cot or incubator per infant, reducing cross contaminations.

The facility is built of manufactured Concrete Insulated Structural Panels that can withstand earthquakes, fires and explosions, and it has been extensively tested and certified by the Ghana Standards Authority.

With galvanized Light Gauge Steel trusses, the roof offers the highest durability and strength, with double glazed aluminium frames  which provide temperature  insulations and noise isolation.

It  is designed to support a complete coverage of solar panels for easy solar power generation in the future.