A north London hospital team has travelled to Ghana to help patients in desperate of care and support.

Eight staff members from Northwick Park Hospital in Watford Road, Harrow, will work at St Joseph’s Hospital in the town of Jirapa, northwest Ghana for a week.

They will run clinics and perform surgery that would otherwise be unavailable.

The team have funded their own trips and will be working in support of the charity N-GHASaid (Northwick Park Ghana Hospitals and School Aid).

The charity also provides humanitarian and educational aid to Guo, a village 20km north of Jirapa.

The hospital is run by the government. The two training schools originally attached to the hospital, Jirapa Nurses' Training College and Jirapa Midwifery Training College are now run independently.

Dr Mike Brunner, consultant anaesthetist, says: “The charity has equipped an operating suite at St Joseph’s Hospital which is now fully functioning.

"Information about our visit is being broadcast on local radio and shared via churches so our team will be working flat out for the week we are there.

“While in Jirapa we will also assess other hospital projects, including a new maternity block which has equipment and 30 beds supplied by N-GHASaid, and be holding meetings with hospital management to discuss future projects.”

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Their future aims include:

1. Continuing to support existing projects that supply theatre equipment and provide education for the nursing college.

2. Helping to equip a newly built obstetric ward with beds, resuscitation equipment, cots, incubators, delivery tables, trolleys, delivery instruments etc.

3. To expand our educational support throughout the hospital.

4. To work towards taking surgical teams to treat patients.

To find out about the work by members of N-GHASaid, vtake a look at www.n-ghasaid.org