Disabilities caused by fractures could be averted by improvements in emergency and orthopaedic care and rehabilitation, Dr Noel Tolgou Yempabe, Head and Consultant Orthopaedic at Tamale Teaching Hospital, has said.
He said complications as disability, anaemia and death, among others, were unacceptable and needed to be addressed properly to save lives.
Dr Yempabe gave the advice at a four-day Traditional Bone setters (TBS) training course in Tamale.
The training was jointly organised by AO Alliance Organisation, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving fracture care in low-and middle-income countries and the Traditional Medicine Council.
The training was to build capacities of TBS operating in Northern Ghana to enable them to know their limitations and recognise cases that need a referral to orthodox care at the hospitals to reduce disability.
He said complications from wrong bone setting methods and practices had been a major challenge to orthopaedic care in Ghana.
Dr Yempabe advised patients to acquire National Health Insurance Cards to reduce expenses on trauma treatment at the hospital.
Dr Dominic Konadu-Yeboah, National Project Lead and Principal Investigator of AO Alliance Organisation, said the participants would be given certificates of participation after the training.
He said the certificates would be used to acquire licenses from the Traditional Medicine Council to operate.
He announced that AO Alliance Organisation had established the TBS association in Northern Ghana and in the Ashanti Region under one umbrella to share information.
Traditional Bone Setters are practitioners who take up the practice of healing without having any formal training in accepted medical procedures.
Mostly these TBS undertake their practices in urban centres and manage patients with fractures and dislocations through unorthodox means.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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