Mission

Anglican Eye Clinic - Jachie

Sr. Aba is a Ghanaian nurse who did her nurse training at Agogo Hospital in Ghana. After qualifying she came to England to join the Order of the Holy Paraclete. While in England she obtained her English qualication in nursing and went on to get the Certificate in Tropical Ophthalmology from the Institute of Ophthalmology, London. She has also obtained her Ophthalmic Nursing Diploma at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

After taking her vows as a nun, she was sent to South Africa and worked in Soweto. She then returned to Ghana and worked at Battor Hospital running the Eye Dept.

The order of the Holy Paraclete took the decision to establish a new convent in Ghana and were given land at Jachie where a new convent has been established. It opened in Nov 03.

Meanwhile the Anglican Bishop of Kumasi had felt the need for an eye clinic to serve one of the poorer areas in the diocese and so a clinic was built at Jachie. This clinic was built by the people of Jachie on ground donated by the Chief. It was completed in April 02 and is now tending to the eye needs of Jachie and the surrounding area. Clinics are not only held at Jachie, but also in other health centres,.schools and churches. Patients needing surgery
are taken to Agogo Hospital,  Akwatia Hospital or even Korle Bu Hospital in Accra.

The clinic was eqipped through donations from St. Barnabas Church, and medications which cannot be bought locally are also supplied by St Barnabas Church. The money for this is raised at Craft Aid which is held annually. Money is also given from the annual donations to charities made by the church. The salary of the clinic clerk is paid by Barney's shop. A vehicle has been purchased by donations from a very grateful patient in Teesside, by the church and by the OHP. This vehicle is used for carrying out peripheral clinics, school visits and for transporting patients to and from hospital.

This clinic is in a rural area and many of the patients cannot afford to pay for their medications or surgical treatment and so these are subsidised by money sent from the church. This has resulted in patients, who otherwise  would have gone blind, having their sight preserved or restored.

At present there are only 2 schools for the blind in Ghana - one at Akropong in the south-east and one at Wa in the north-west. These are several hundreds of miles away from the Kumasi region and are virtually inaccessable to people from this region; we hope that at some time in the future it might be possible to establish a School for the Blind in the Kumasi region. There is much need as, apart from children who are blind due to congenital defects, blindness due to glaucoma is often seen in teenagers.