Kobby Okum fêtes patients of Orthopaedic Training Centre
From Selorm GBORBIDZI, Nsawam-E/R
The President of the Ghana Impact Project, a charity that supports people living with disabilities, Kobby Okum, on Friday feted the residents and patients of the Orthopaedic Training Centre (OTC) at Nsawam in the Eastern Region of Ghana.
He spent several hours interacting with the staff and patients and took time to engage with the overseers of the Centre.
He also donated an amount of $10,000 to the Centre to enable them to procure more prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs for their clients.
In an interview with The New Finder, Okum explained that the decision to partner with the center was borne from his experience of schooling with PWDs after migrating to the United States as a young boy.
According to him, the shock and awe of seeing PWDs going about their normal business sowed the seed of wanting to help people with similar conditions back in Ghana to get the chance to become the best versions of themselves that they could be.
It was therefore based on this that he reached out to the OTC some three years ago and came to an agreement to support them with $10,000 annually.
The Director of the OTC, Sister Elizabeth Newman, a nun with the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND), said the OTC currently has over 25 stations dotted all over the country to enable the over 6000 patients who have a need for prosthetics and orthopaedic care to access these services without traveling long distances.
The Centre also runs a daycare for children with cerebral palsy as a way of giving them care and also unburdening their parents to work during the day while the children are at school.
She indicated that the biggest challenge currently facing the center is the cost of clearing imported materials into the country for the purposes of making orthopaedic appliances.
“A big, big challenge for us is to clear them in time and without a lot of expenses to the Centre. Maybe if I’m a market lady and I’m bringing a container, I pass on my charges to the client.
Here we can’t do it, cause most of our people are marginalized and poor, and many of them we help, we give them services free, cause they can’t afford it.”
She appealed to the government to come on board to take on the burden of paying the salaries of more of their staff as a way of helping the Centre since they currently pay the salaries of about 60% of their staff.
