Immaraba! Impuyje kapaj sokAm , naun deszogo!
Thank you very much all the invited guests for honoring us with their presence!
I am originally from Central Eu from a small country called Hungary. After finishing med school I immigrated to the US and became an eye doctor. I worked in private practice there for 25 years. It has always been my dream to work in a developing country, so I started to do 2-week long cat surgery outreaches to Central America and Africa in 2003.7 years ago I moved to Tamale permanently, as I realized that my skills will better serve the needy here than in the US. It was dr Wanye who convinced me to come to Tamale, so I am eternally grateful to him for this.
I have been working in the Tamale Teaching Hosp since. A few years ago with a few friends, namely dr Collins, Jangu Ibrahim and Mashood Osman we decided to start an independent eye hospital. We named it the NCEH.
Our mission is to consistently provide comprehensive and good quality eye care to all patients, regardless of their age, race, tribe, religion and financial status. Our services are easily accessible and affordable. We will also provide general eye health education, and after the initial setup period, we are also going to train eye care workers.
Our team is committed to treat all patients with professionalism, compassion and in a way to preserve their dignity.
The word “Community” in the name of our hospital means that the needs of our community, meaning whole North Ghana, guide all our decisions. We do not want to take care of only the rich and affluent. We are realizing a special business model, called Aravind, already working well in many Asian and African countries. It is based on differential pricing, so we can take care of everyone in the community, rich and poor equally. This will take some time to develop and implement and there will we mistakes made in the beginning, so we are begging you, the public, to be patient with us. We promise that we will live up to your expectations.
We already applied to NHIS and hopefully within a few months we will be approved. This will make our services even more affordable.
What I see as one of the major problems preventing Ghana to develop more rapidly is the general lack of cooperation and collaboration. So many of us spend valuable time, energy and talent fighting each other instead of working together to advance our cause, whatever that might be. The reason is that we perceive each other as competitors, sometimes even as enemies. Just in my field, some eye doctors fight the optometrists and the eye nurses, and the optoms the eye nurses. We are not enemies of each other, our enemy is blindness, and we have to fight together to conquer it. So I hope that the NCEH will be an agent in promoting good quality eye care in Ghana and also cooperation and collaboration among eye care workers and the whole community.
