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Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH)
Cure Blindness Project continues its joint effort to establish an eye surgery training center for West Africa modeled after the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology in Nepal. In addition to administering the USAID-supported construction project at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Cure Blindness Project has contributed to the training of several KATH clinicians, administrators and residents through follow-up visits by Cure Blindness Project affiliated ophthalmologists and personalized trainings.
The KATH Eye Center in Kumasi, Ghana, is a new, modern 27,000 square-foot surgical training facility designed to increase the quantity and quality of sight-restoring surgeries as well as increase the country’s ophthalmic capacity to reduce the backlog of those suffering needlessly from treatable blindness. Since its groundbreaking, Cure Blindness Project has been awarded three USAID ASHA grants to fund the procurement of state-of-the art ophthalmic equipment and supplies for the surgical facility at KATH Eye Center.
KATH serves a catchment area of 9.7 million people across three regions. In its first year of operation, the KATH Eye Center saw a 26.5 % increase in surgical eye care. This growth continued over the next couple year, with over 50,000 outpatients seen and 2,424 surgeries performed in 2016. Over 1,300 of those surgeries were provided during outreach cataract surgical campaigns, which is more than twice as many performed in outreach settings in 2015. KATH outreach has ramped up in recent years, and we expect these efforts to continue as they work to reach remote populations in need of eye care.
The KATH Eye Center has a staff of 29 including 8 ophthalmologists and 11 MD Ophthalmology residents. KATH is collaborating with Tamale Teaching Hospital (Northern Region) and Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (Greater Accra Region) to provide an MD Ophthalmology Residency Exchange Program between the three hospitals. Sending residents to other institutions provides them with exposure to a variety of eye conditions and working environments, further enriching their education.
