From Alfred Adams
Over three hundred people have benefitted from primary healthcare services organised by AngloGold Ashanti, Iduapriem Mine, for New Tokunaso, a host community of the mining company.
The medical services form part of the mine’s quarterly rotational medical screening for its host communities, with all expenses borne by the mine. The services include health education, vital signs screening, consultation and treatment of diseases and sicknesses.
The medical screening forms part of the Mine’s Social Investment Strategy for 2015, which seeks to promote access to potable water, basic health, and sanitation in its host communities, and the creation of community health awareness campaigns, in collaboration with the Municipal Health Directorate.
The community leaders of New Tokunaso commended the mine for addressing issues of healthcare in its host communities by bringing services closer to their doorsteps. According to them, the expenses of consultation and full medical care borne by the mine was a gesture worth emulating by other companies operating in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality.
The chiefs and people of New Tokunaso also praised the mine for its social intervention projects in complementing the Millennium Development Goal (MDG6). In an interview, the Physician Assistant of the mine, Cynthia Odoom-Wilson, underscored the need to be healthy. She encouraged the community members to adopt healthy lifestyle modifications in order to prevent diseases and sicknesses, especially hypertension and diabetes.
A Community Development Officer in charge of Social Investment of the mine, Mr. Enoch Osei, enumerated the rationale behind the medical outreach. He said the project forms part of the social investment strategy of the mine, including local economic development, education and youth, health water and sanitation, and support to social infrastructure development, in partnership with the government.
AngloGold Ashanti Iduapriem Mine is committed to bringing healthcare to the people of its host communities through some of these initiatives. Other communities which have benefited from the health programme called on the mine to sustain the initiative, since it is a resolve to complement the efforts of the government.