Dr. Addo (extreme right) interacting with participants afterwards at the St Joseph Hospital
ABOUT 40 media personnel from the southern sector of the country have attended a two-day training workshop on ‘Reporting on trauma and fracture’ in Koforidua.
This was jointly organised by the Paediatric Fracture Solutions for Ghana Project, and AO Alliance, a group committed to fracture care in low income countries.
The participants were taken through epidemiology of trauma in Ghana, diagnosis and care of trauma in patients and emergency health system injury prevention.
Topics discussed included managing and treatment of fractures by medical personnel and bone setters in Ghana, ethics in research and ethical journalism, among others.
As part of the workshop, the participants took part in ‘ward rounds’ at the St. Joseph Hospital in Koforidua, to have firsthand information on trauma cases.
Dr. Wilfred Labi Addo, a trauma surgeon at the St. Joseph Hospital, revealed that children with factures were primarily treated by traditional bone setters.
That often resulted in complications, which led to deaths or permanent disability among the children, robbing them of their future, he added.
Dr. Addo noted that road traffic trauma was the leading cause of death and disability in Ghana, usually afflicting people in the 15-49 age group.
For instance, he said between 1994 and 1998, a total of 434,012 road accidents were recorded in the country, out of which 18,812 suffered severe injuries.
Dr. Addo maintained that trauma as a disease was better prevented than treated, and so “efforts at preventing road accidents should be intensified since road accidents were the most common causes of trauma”.
FROM ALBERTO MARIO NORETTI, KOFORIDUA
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