MONROVIA — The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saint charity, has donated 33 different types of medical equipment to the Jackson F. Done Hospital in Tappita, Nimba County. The equipment Value almost One hundred thousand united states dollars (USD$ 100, 000.00).

The equipment will help to improve service delivery at the hospitals. The donated equipment includes; Amputation surgery machine, Burr Hole Surgery, Abdominal Surgery Machine, Tonsillectomy Machine, Appendectomy and Hernia and Surgery Adult one Tube amongst others.

Presenting the equipment, Elder Lee Trapani said, the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saint is a worldwide charity that receives donation from people from around the world and ask people like him who live in Liberia to find “good places to spent their money.”

According to him, a year ago, a request for help was made by one of the hospitals staff who and asked him to consider looking into the needs of the Jackson F. Doe Hospital in Nimba County.

Elder Lee Trapani  said: “After our visit we saw the need to help the hospital to support the staff to work effectively. We know that your needs do not stop with the equipment we are donating today. It’s our privilege to hand over this equipment to Dr. Dolo and the hospital.

Receiving the items on behalf of the Jackson F. Doe regional referral hospital, Dr. Ponnie Robertlee Dolo MD, PhD on behalf of the minister of Health Dr. Louise Kpoto thanked the hospital for the donation and said, it will do a lot in serving patients who visit the hospital.

 He said:” The 33 different medical equipment donated will help the quality of care for patients. On behalf of the minister of health D. Luois Kpoto we thank you for the donation.”

Tappita, Nimba County – The charity group, Tappita District Development Association (TADDA) has donated a consignment of drugs to the Jackson F. Doe (JFD) Memorial Referral Hospital in Tappita, Nimba County.

TADDA comprises citizens hailing from Tappita Statutory District residing in Liberia and the diaspora.

Making the donation recently at the Hospital in Tappita, the Executive Director of TADDA, Joanne Toweh said the gesture is the organization’s way of identifying with the Government and management of the hospital in providing health services to the population of the area and Liberia at large.

Madam Toweh, a native of Tappita District, currently resides in the United States. On her visit to Liberia recently, she led a delegation including members of TADDA Liberia to Tappita for the donation.

She said the money generated to purchase the drugs was raised from a rally held in Monrovia to support the hospital.

She thanked the management of the hospital for the great job in in serving the people over the years and pledged TADDA’s commitments to supporting the hospital in whatever positive way it can.

“I want you all to know that this is a relationship building process. That we will do more and better things together. I am proud of the hospital and I like what you guys are doing for the people and the nation,” she said.

“TADDA is a non-political organization, we are charity based. So, whatever we can do to help each other we will do it.  I want to pledge our commitment to the hospital again, we will do everything to help the community through the hospital.”

She revealed that TADDA is working with partners in the United States to bring in a huge consignment of medical supplies for the hospital and clinics within the district.

Receiving the medicines including Amoxicillin, Erythromycin, Cyproheptadine, Hepatitis B vaccines and examination gloves worth more than US$2,000, the Chief Medical Officer of JFD, Dr. Saygbeh M. Vanyanbah thanked TADDA for the donation and said the gesture is an act of true patriotism.

“This is what we call true stakeholder-ship. To be a stakeholder does not limit you to just be an advocate.  So, I want to take this time to tell the TADDA family in the US and back home here that we are very elated that they could come and identify with the hospital,” he lauded.

“Even though this hospital is in Tappita, Nimba County, this hospital is for the entire country and has been doing just that by serving the entire population. So, your gesture today is not only for the people of Tappita, it is for the entire country.”

Dr. Vanyanbah, speaking further revealed that the gesture came at the time the hospital is going through tough times due to stressed budget.

Meanwhile, funding for the drugs was generated from the ongoing ‘One Dollar’ rally in support of JFD Hospital.

According to the Chairperson of TADDA Monrovia Chapter, Marie Gonkerwon, TADDA intends to reach out to every Liberian to contribute at least US$1 to raise the targeted amount of US$200,000 for the procurement of some essential materials for the hospital.

The materials, she said include essential drugs, a transformer to bring in electricity to the hospital, as well as hiring a resident neurosurgeon to work at the hospital.

She thanked all those who have contributed so far and called on every Liberian to make their contribution toward the rally via the organization’s bank accounts at the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI): 001USD40489999201 and 001LRD40489999202 or mobile money account: 0880881540.

“As host community of the hospital, we believe our collective effort, as small it might be, will help augment the effort of the Government of Liberia, the hospital’s management and partners in meeting the health needs of our people,” Madam Gonkerwon said.

TADDA is a non-government organization established in the early 2000s by group of citizens hailing from Tappita Statutory District in Nimba County residing in the United States.

With branches both in the United States and Liberia, the organization has undertaken several development projects in the district including the renovation of schools, supply of medical equipment and medicines and construction of hand pumps and latrines.

TADDA also provides financial aid to students hailing from Tappita District at tertiary institutions across Liberia.

In Liberia, it is headed by Joe W. Bantu as Country Representative. Madam Gonkerwon serves as Deputy Country Representative and Chairperson of Monrovia Chapter.

Sanniquellie, Nimba County – A dark cloud of imminent collapse, of its diagnostic capabilities, hangs over postwar Liberia’s unarguably best hospital, Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital, according to veteran Liberian Photojournalist, Sando Moore.

Moore, the Publisher of the acclaimed Sando Moore Images Magazine, recently visited the hospital in Tappita, Nimba County, where he observed that several of the hospital’s instruments and equipment are broken down, adding that if care is not urgently taken to repair or replace these wrecked machines, the hospital risks total collapse.

The Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital was inaugurated on 12 February 2011, as a gift from the People’s Republic of China to Liberia, with the facility being fully equipped to the standards of any modern health facility elsewhere on the globe.

But Moore says about five years on, trepidations are rife that challenges at the China-aided health facility suggest that if care is not taken urgently to address the growing problems of wrecked instruments and equipment being faced by the country’s only exceptional rural referral hospital, the Chinese  gift to their Liberian friends would cascade to the bottom of the dustbin of history, as an institution that started well, as far as health care delivery to Liberians is concerned, but equally quickly fell by the wayside.

According to the Liberian photojournalist, Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director, Dr. Lawrence M. Sherman, confirmed to him (Moore) in a recent interview that the hospital’s CT-scan machine, which is very vital to conducting in-depth diagnosis, has been down for well over two years now.

To get the CT-scan machine, the only one in the whole country, up and running again, it will cost some US$200,000 for repair works to be carried out on the machine, which many Liberians, who cannot afford the fortune of seeking medical attention abroad more or less depended on for in-depth medical diagnosis prior to its collapse.

Moore also observed that the hospital’s mammogram machine used for breast cancer screening and for breast cancer diagnosis has broken down for almost two years. One of the three generators the hospital relies on for constant power supply to the institution is totally in shambles, while the others require routine repair almost weekly, according to Moore.

The magazine publisher added that the wind of wreckage blowing across the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital has not spared the hospital’s laboratory, with most of the clinical machines, including the chemistry machine and blood machine, in the once well-equipped laboratory being grounded for some times now due to break down.

Dr. Sherman, according to Moore, stressed the need to urgently repair or source funding to replace the hospital’s blood machine with a new one, without which, he said, it is practically impossible for more detailed blood investigation to be conducted at the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital.

Howbeit, Moore maintained that investigation conducted by him revealed that most instruments and equipment of the hospital have run into serious mechanical problems and are already worn-out, having been repaired repeatedly, such machines are now at the phase that repairing is no longer an option.

Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital, the only referral health institution in the country with almost a dozen of expatriate doctors, including professional health practitioners specialized in Pathology, Anesthesiology, Radiology, among others, receives less than US$3 million from central government as budgetary allocation for the upkeep of the hospital.

Moore says for a health facility of such remarkable reputation as the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital to keep providing sustainable and enhanced health services, Government’s funding of less than US$3 million is a drop in the ocean.

“With a budget of less than three million, you cannot maintain such a major hospital with eight expatriates – the only hospital [in the country] with specialists in Pathology and Anesthesiology.”

He intoned that the hospital medical team comprising a Pathologist, Anesthesiologist, Histo-technician, Obstetrician and Gynecologist, General Surgeon, Pediatrician and Internist are being paid from the institution’s US$3 million budgetary allocation.

He pleaded that although Government has been trying to maintain the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital through budgetary allocation in the tone of US$3 million, there is a need for the GoL and its partners to urgently assist the hospital with increased funding.

Moore, who sees the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital as a glowing legacy of the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf regime, pointed out that in order to maintain such legacy, pumping in more funding for the sustenance of the hospital is of urgent and paramount essence, indicating that it was therefore paramount to maintain such legacy, all hands must be placed on deck aimed at sourcing more funding so that the basic things at the institution are maintained and for sustainability to continue.

The Liberian journalist is not alone in his plea for increased funding to the hospital. When contacted, the former Medical Director of the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital, now Deputy Minister of Health and Liberia’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Francis Kerteh, said to sustain the hospital, it would require “good budgetary allocation.”

Dr. Kerteh, who corroborated Moore’s assertions that several machines at the Jackson F. Doe Memorial Referral Hospital are in ruins, noted that erecting a structure such as the one housing the hospital and equipping it as a hospital, seems to be the easiest part, but opined that “the most difficult is maintenance and sustainability – and these aspects of it, require funding – good budgetary allocation.”

However, the Chief Medical Officer of Liberia disclosed that Government and its partners are making strides to abridge the difficulties being experienced at the JFD Hospital.

Meanwhile, journalist Moore has warned that failure to heed calls for increased funding to the hospital would spell doom for the survivability of the institution which cost the Chinese some hefty sum of money and drained the sacrifices of several persons, including now deceased John N.T. Strother, who made the life-saving decision of donating 50 acres of land for the construction of a regional health facility that has to date not only provided services to Liberians and those residing in the country, but to Guineans and other citizens from other countries in the sub-region.