Okaikoi donates equipment to orthopaedic centre

Story: Sebastian Syme
THE Chairman of the National Council on Persons with Disability, Mr Andrew Okaikoi, has made a personal donation of orthopaedic equipment valued at £50,000 to the Orthopaedic Training Centre at Adoagyiri in the Eastern Region.
The items include 50 crutches, 25 wheelchairs, 50 walking canes, 10 walking frames, one calliper, five orthopaedic shoes and 40 blankets.
The items are meant to support the centre in meeting its material needs towards satisfying the hundreds of patients who often lack the basic equipment to make life easier for them.
Presenting the items, Mr Okaikoi, who himself is physically challenged, said he had been a beneficiary of the institute and, therefore, saw the need to support an institution that had contributed to his well-being.
He said while at the centre during his days of training, he witnessed some of the major challenges the patients faced and so as the current chairman of the very institution that oversaw the welfare of the physically challenged, it behoved him to give his widow’s mite.
He asked the authorities of the centre to provide him with a documented detail of the problems confronting the centre to enable him to forward it to the government for appropriate attention.
A Co-Director of the centre, Sister Elizabeth Newman, who received the items, commended Mr Okaikoi for the gesture and enumerated some challenges the centre faced.
She stated that of the 70 employees at the centre, only 22 were on government payroll, with the rest receiving salaries from the already meagre resources of the centre.
She said the employees on government payroll were paid by the ministries of Health and Education and that the situation had created huge salary disparities between those on the payroll and the others.
Sister Newman also complained about the huge utility tariffs the centre had been saddled with and called for government’s intervention to relieve the centre of the agony of paying high electricity bills which otherwise could have been channelled into obtaining more equipment for the benefit of patients.
The centre, which is scheduled to mark its 50th anniversary in June 2011, currently runs a school from the kindergarten to the junior high school level.