Mr. Barnabas Asamoah of the Emergency Medicine unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), has emerged as the Overall Best Staff for 2023 at the annual ‘Thanksgiving Service, Joint Staff Reception, Best Staff and Long Service Awards ceremony of the hospital in Kumasi.
He received the prize of GH¢20,000.00 plus a flat screen television and a refrigerator.
The first, second and third Runners-up Best Staff award winners also received GH¢15,000.00, GH¢10,000.00 and GH¢5,000.00 cash prizes plus flat screen television sets and fridges respectively.
The Overall Best Staff in a photograph with the CEO, Prof. Otchere Addai-Mensah
In all, there were 19 category winners and 20 of the longest serving members of staff at the hospital across all the professional classes, most of whom have served KATH for over 40 years.
Prof. Otchere Addai-Mensah, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of KATH in an address, observed that the year 2023 had largely been extremely good for the hospital partly due to hard work by staff members and so management and Board deemed it appropriate to confer special honours on those who distinguished themselves in the course of their work or exhibited extraordinary dedication to the hospital.
He said a major improvement in the 2023 Best Staff awards scheme was that “the overall best staff category has been expanded to include a third overall best runner-up for the first time in the history of the scheme and the cash prizes for the four overall best winners have also been increased by over 30 per cent”.
Prof. Addai-Mensah noted that the “task of transforming the hospital into an elite tertiary medical centre was not going to be an easy one” and stressed that “it is going to take a lot of hard work, steely determination, personal and collective sacrifices to achieve that goal” and admonished every staff member to deliver as expected because management will not hesitate to take disciplinary action if even that would amount to stepping on the toes of dear ones.
The CEO said the supply of refill medicines by courier to the hospital’s chronic but stable patients scattered all over the country under an arrangement with the Ghana Post, is the first of its kind in the country’s public health sector and will save people from the stress of traveling from their homes just for the medicines at a small fee and explained that “these innovative interventions” will contribute to improving rational drugs use practices at the hospital.
On the KATH Old Blocks Renovation Project launched by Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, to raise USD10 million, Prof. Addai-Mensah disclosed that public response has been so encouraging and work on the project has commenced. “I can say on authority that in less than two months after the launch of the fund-raising campaign by the Asantehene, we are about 60 per cent through with our USD 10 million target in terms of pledges and cash donations”.
“Words cannot simply describe how grateful we are to Asante Overlord manwura for his uncommon foresight and courage to undertake the project as part of the legacy projects to mark the 25th anniversary of his enstoolment”, the CEO stressed.
