10 Years of the Nutrition Centre, Ghana

Our partners, Ann & Terry were delighted to attend the official 10 Year anniversary celebration of the Nutrition Centre.

It was a wonderful experience with some of the local Chiefs attending and many of the mums, carers, hospital staff and local villagers. The biggest thrill was to see 10 of the children that had been inpatients back in 2008/09. Norma (the nutritional officer) had been at the Centre from the day it opened and he had gone round asking some of the original children to attend with their parents.

Four of these children had been ones the fathers were due to take out to the bush to kill, yet all these years later here they were standing in front of us well and without exception attending local schools. Norma gave an excellent speech in which he confirmed over 5000 children had been saved in the 10 years that the Centre had been open.

The Nutrition Centre has come so far in the last 10 years and we look forward to seeing what the next 10 years will bring!

As well as celebrating the Centre’s achievements so far, we looked to the future with the opening of two new buildings. One is a high dependency unit to treat children with other medical needs on top of malnutrition and the other is a staff house connected to the Centre, making it easier to oversee patients in the evening and weekends.

The funds to build the HDU had been given by Cherish, a ladies charity, and we are hugely grateful to them for their generosity. From the day the doors opened it has been full with sick malnourished children that also require full nursing care before they can be transferred into the normal huts at the Nutrition Centre. It has also helped ease some of the pressure on the main children’s ward which at times has up to 3 children on every bed!

Ann and Terry