About 200 people with various forms of body defects in the Ashanti Region have been screened to benefit from a free plastic surgery to correct their deformities.
According to the organisers, most people are unable to afford the cost involved in plastic surgery even though they are in critical need of it to correct their conditions.
GALAXY Foundation is funding the exercise to be conducted by the GRAFT Foundation, a non-governmental organization founded by the Head of Plastic Surgery and Burns at the 37 Military Hospital Dr Kwame Abrokwaa-Yankyera.
An amount of GHC1.8 million is expected to be injected into the exercise that is scheduled to is scheduled to take place on May 27 to June 6, 2016.
Dr Abrokwaa-Yankyera noted even with the help of the National Health Insurance, reconstructive plastic surgery is still expensive, thus depriving a lot of people from having the chance to correct their defects and live a normal life.
“Some people even try to end their life because they are unable to afford the cost of a plastic surgery in order to correct their condition whilst others are also not aware that their conditions can be corrected.
“That is the why this Foundation was therefore formed to bring relief and change the lives of people who cannot afford to pay for plastic surgery but need the services”, he noted.
Dr Abrokwaa-Yankyera advised the public to visit the hospital any time they realized something unusual on any part of their body because people attribute some defects to witchcraft.
He also tasked them to take advantage of the Foundation’s free plastic surgery to correct their conditions.
GRAFT Foundation has since 2013 been able to bring hope to over 400 persons by correcting their defects, in eight out of the 10 regions in the country.
Seventy persons in Ivory Coast have also benefited from the free services as part of the Foundation’s ECOWAS Outreach.
Project Coordinator of the Foundation and also a plastic surgeon at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr BreinardAnanesaid look to extending the free services to other parts of the country since not everyone can travel to Kumasi and Accra to benefit.
He said all the plastic surgeons in Ghana are based in Accra and Kumasi, making it difficult for other people who need the services of the plastic surgeons to have easy access to them.
Ibrahim Abubakar|tv3network.com|Ghana