Part One: Story of the Holy Family Clinic, Kulmasa, Northern Ghana
Over the coming days, Sister Rita Amponsaa-Owusu is delighted to be telling you the story of the newly constructed Holy Family Family Clinic in Kulmasa, Northern Ghana, which is due to be blessed and inaugurated on Monday, 30th September 2024. This is MMS’ Foundation Day - the day that commemorates Dr Anna Dengel founding her Society in Washington DC on 30th September 1925. From 30th September 2024 until 30th September 2025, Medical Mission Sisters and Associates around the world will be celebrating their Centenary year to mark 100 Years of Healing Presence.
Part 1: The background to the Holy Family Family Clinic, Kulmasa, Northern Ghana
MMS’ presence in Ghana dates back to 1948. Here, we founded the Holy Family Hospital in Berekum, Bono Region, and the Holy Family Hospital in Techiman, Bono East Region, where some of the sisters continue to serve today.
Sister Rita recalls how the Medical Mission Sisters (MMS) came to develop their new mission in Kulmasa in Northern Ghana, originally through an invitation from the Catholic Bishop of Damongo, Bishop Peter Paul Angkyier. In May 2019, Sister Edith Dug-yi visited this underserved location to assess the healthcare needs in the local communities consulting, among others, traditional chiefs and opinion leaders, regional and district health authorities and local women’s groups. The land for MMS’ integrated healthcare programme had been donated by local chiefs who, through this gift, were expressing their strong wish for the sisters to come and start their new activities in Kulmasa - including building a family clinic. This is a remarkable gesture, Sister Rita explains, given that the local chiefs are mostly Muslims, yet they have entrusted delivery of future healthcare services to a congregation of Catholic sisters. Certainly, since then, these local leaders have played a key role as partners in the new programme, mobilising people to come forward to receive healthcare treatment.
When Sister Rita and the first sisters arrived in Kulmasa in October 2020, they found that existing healthcare facilities in the surrounding area were ill-equipped to respond to even the most basic healthcare needs of the local population, who are poor, and live mainly from hand to mouth through subsistence farming. They farm to feed themselves and their families and it is usual for each household to rear animals, which they sell in times of need, to supplement meagre household incomes from farming the land. Seasonal famine is common amongst farming families and this leads to a high incidence of child malnutrition. At times, not even a paracetamol tablet was available for patients, seeking treatment at Kulmasa’s Community-based Health Planning and Service compound.
For this reason, in August 2021, Medical Mission Sisters chose to launch, what has become, a very successful public health programme. The programme was originally designed to create more awareness of health issues, including the promotion of general health and hygiene, among people living in remote, rural villages and to make healthcare more accessible to them - with a special focus on services for: pregnant women; children under five years of age; older persons; persons with disabilities and other special needs; as well as the region’s malnourished children. By July 2023, around 4,855 people had come to access healthcare, been examined and, as necessary, treated and cared for by members of MMS’ growing public health team, which quickly grew to include eighteen healthcare professionals. Some elderly patients had never received healthcare before, but Sister Rita reports that they now appreciate regular blood pressure tests and other health checks by the team. Many more pregnant women also dare to come forward for antenatal care and are ready to accept the idea of safe delivery in a healthcare facility, rather than childbirth at home. She is most grateful to Else-Kroner-Fresenius-Stiftung in Germany and the Stichting Vrienden Medische Missiezusters in the Netherlands (usually known as Vrienden) for fostering these activities, and to our ever supportive partner organisation in Vienna, Austria, Jugend Eine Welt.
Currently, Sister Rita tells us that the number of people seeking healthcare through this programme goes well beyond the capacity of its present public health space and resources. Over the past year, she explains how consistently following up the communities through the public health team’s regular home visits, durbars, mobile clinics and health promotion activities has helped to win their confidence and trust across our wide catchment area - and the story doesn’t stop there. While construction of the clinic on MMS’ site in Kulmasa is ongoing and almost complete, local people have been making long journeys to the sisters’ compound, where they wait for hours to receive ad hoc, walk-in outpatient services. Medical consultations are squeezed into every available space on the site and offices have become temporary treatment rooms. Recently, during the malaria season, 943 patients were treated in one month for many different conditions, ranging from severe cases of malaria to snake bites. Increasing numbers of people have also had to be detained overnight for medical treatment, overwhelming the three beds that are currently available for them. Sometimes, two babies share one bed, and adults sit in chairs to receive their infusions; other patients are referred to the regional facility in Wa, nearly 50 kms away. Being located along the main highway, Sister Rita tells us that medical emergencies are also rushed in, including by the highway police - whether road traffic accident victims or passengers with medical emergencies. She and her medical team simply cannot turn away sick and injured people because they are deeply committed to ‘leaving no-one behind.’
You can watch a short video about what we do through this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqC-M7du7rk
In these very pressured circumstances, the new family clinic is more and more urgently needed. Today, its construction is being made possible through a major funding award from missio Aachen to whom we are most grateful.
On Monday, 30th September 2024, the new clinic will be blessed and inaugurated. Please don’t forget to revisit our website on this anniversary day to read more about the generosity of our donors, to hear Sister Rita telling us how they have helped her and Unit West Africa to create the new family clinic, and to learn about the life-giving services that she and her medical team plan to deliver in it. A Centenary year is a time to celebrate, but it is also a time to stand ever more closely in solidarity across the world with those who count on our support.
Founder Anna Dengel’s words, written in later years of her life, remain as relevant as ever:
“My heart will be with you on September 30th, when I am ready to tell the Lord that I would be willing to begin all over again and give all I have for our beloved religious family. Thank God for everything and let us remember in love and gratitude those who went before us with the sign of faith. Also for us, the best is yet come…!”