My trip to Ghana - Day 3

Today, we travelled to visit another rehabilitation project at Krachi, which is clearly very well run. The issues were similar to those at Bolgatanga, but they have also managed to get some financing from the local District Assembly to help support the project. They are planning to use a boat - from the Assembly - to access the many islands on Lake Volta, which have never enjoyed any rehabilitation services.

They estimate their backlog of patients for cataract surgery at about 200 and a waiting time of about a year for rehabilitation. They are cooperating with the District Assembly in pulling together a register of disabled people, including the nature and cause of their disabilities. Leafing through this, the overwhelmingly dominant cause of irreversible blindness is glaucoma, which is something we need to try and get a grip on in the future.

The main problem here is with a lack of vehicles – we offered to replace one of their two motor bikes which had irretrievably broken down. It was also mentioned was that some of the clients had a problem with microfinance as they had become accustomed to handouts and didn’t understand that they actually had to repay the loans.

We crossed Lake Volta (the biggest man-made lake in the world) via plantoon to reach Nkwanta, where we’re staying overnight. There were beautiful views over the lake at sunset, but these were marred somewhat by thoughts of the number of people on the register of disabled who had been blinded by ‘spitting snakes’!