Introduction

In the next couple of months a group of volunteers from different backgrounds will work together to design the extension to an eye clinic in Ghana. Architects and engineers from London will work together for Architecture for Humanity to design clinic for Ashanti Development. I will try to keep a regular blog to tell you about this exciting project and show you what we are doing.

During the summer of 2007, over two hundred Ashanti men contributed their labour free of charge to build the ground floor of a two-storey clinic/hostel in Gyetiase. Building costs were cut substantially, and the work was finished in record time.

The new building is used for several purposes. First, it is staffed by a state registered midwife or nurse, who provides general healthcare and teaches the villagers about health through occasional workshops.

Second, it provides a base for specialist eye care healthworkers; Ashanti Development is currently sponsoring two village women for five months training at Kumasi Komfo Anonkye Hospital. When their course is complete, they will live in Gyetiase, provide general eyecare and screen the villagers for cataracts and other operable sicknesses. Kumasi Hospital will then send its mobile van to the clinic to perform multiple cataract or other eye operations.

Operations will be funded thanks to the generosity of UK opticians, SpecSavers. London SpecSavers Branches have offered to finance one thousand cataract operations, making an enormous difference to the recipients’ quality of life. SpecSavers will also provide a full range of eye testing equipment for the clinic, together with recycled, graded, secondhand spectacles from their London stores.

In time, the clinic will also be used to enhance the training of outreach healthworkers, trained at Ashanti Development’s expense and stationed in many of the villages around Gyetiase. These healthworkers will be equipped with mobile phones and able to summon hospital transport when necessary.

Finally, the first floor, which has still to be built, will be used to house teachers and other volunteer workers from the UK who may visit Gyetiase from time to time.

Architecture for Humanity is involved in the design for this first floor.