A three year-old girl convulses on the table in a pool of her own saliva. Her eyes are rolled back into her head and she has lost control of her breathing, which now comes in short gasps. Her father sweats as he rubs her head gently, his face a combination of fear and hope. There is nothing he can do for his daughter now; she is in the advanced stages of malaria and must be admitted to the ward.

A fourteen year-old girl obtains an abortion from an unlicensed doctor in neighboring Togo. Fearing shame and public humiliation, the girl lies about her actions and is instead admitted to the ward for dysentery (a disease with similar symptoms as hers, affecting the intestines). During surgery, the doctors discover the real problem: her uterus has contracted gangrene and must be removed completely for the girl to survive.

A seventy eight year-old primary school teacher, blind in one eye, suffers from extreme abdominal pain. Looking for a way to keep up with his young students, he has been abusing adobabobo, a local medication said to “allow a seventy year-old man to play football like a twenty year-old”. Unfortunately the drug has caused a gastric ulcer, which, if untreated, could cause the man to bleed to death through his stomach.

These are just three cases of the hundreds that face Saboba Medical Centre each day. That’s right, each day. Take a minute to let that resonate.

Saboba Medical Centre (SMC) is located in the north western region of Ghana near the border with Togo. The centre houses the only hospital in the region and primarily serves residents of the Saboba and Cheriponi districts (the next nearest hospital is in Tamale, over 5 hours away in the dry season and unreachable in the wet season).

SMC has a staff of about 100, including administrators, nurses, drivers, lab assistants, and technicians. Unlike larger city hospitals, which are entirely funded by the government, SMC’s status as a rural district hospital prevents large-scale government funding. This leaves the majority of fundraising to be conducted independently. As for the health ministry, Ghana has quite an impressive medical insurance program. For just ten dollars per year paying citizens and their children can receive medical consultations, prescription drugs, surgeries (even cosmetic), and other health-related services, free of charge. The only challenge is that in deeply impoverished areas, like Saboba, ten dollars per year is still quite a lot of money.

On an average weekday SMC consults around 150 patients, eighty percent of whom suffer from malaria. Other ailments include peptic ulcer diseases, hernias, respiratory tract infections, typhoid, dysentery, incomplete abortions, and malnutrition. If this is not an amazing feat in its own right, this next piece of information will surely blow your mind: Saboba Medical Centre has only one trained doctor.

The hospital is run by the amazingly dedicated Kingsley Effah. Kingsley, chief administrator at SMC, is responsible for budgeting, staffing, insurance claims, and all the other necessities that allow the hospital to function as well as it does (imagine running a hospital with the nearest internet connection 3 hours away).

Kingsley is our main contact at SMC and after meeting with him briefly it is easy to see his dedication to SMC, and to Saboba. To give you a better idea of this, Kingsley spent 7 months trying to secure a part-time doctor for SMC. The result: Dr. Michael Opoku, an incredible find, and an even more incredible man for SMC.

Originally hired for a one-month contract (expiring at the end of this month), Dr. Opoku is responsible for patient consults (of which we did over seventy five yesterday, in a grueling ten hour shift), surgeries (of which he has four scheduled for this Tuesday), house calls, ward supervision (for which he has eighty two beds to monitor), and administrative work. His salary is significantly lower than it could be in a major city like Accra or Kumasi, and his job is much more demanding. It is no surprise, then, that keeping talented doctors such as Dr. Opoku in small district hospitals like Saboba can be a challenge: much more work for much less pay. Yet as Dr. Opoku and Sammy Kando (whom GO! is sponsoring through medical school; pictured below) believe, saving lives is about more than just money, rather it is about truly making a difference with regard to those in need. And Saboba certainly has its share of those in need.

The following morning we follow Dr. Opoku as he makes his rounds through the different wards. The children’s ward is our first stop and I recognize many of them from the previous day. Nearly all of them were admitted for malaria, and nearly all of them are recovering quite well.

But SMC is about more than just the facts, and so I will try to bring it to life for you as it has come alive for me. Forgive me if the following sounds cliché, it is not meant to.

The humid, concrete ward, with its once-decadent ceiling fans and hospital beds, seems to be falling apart before my very eyes. The washbasins have ceased to function and are now gathering dust, as are the window screens, walls, and patient records. Stains adorn the stone walls and floor as telltale signs of hasty treatment, and a few overworked nurses, in pink and white uniforms, rush from bed to bed. A few children cry out, momentarily, and I meet the sunken eyes of an old man recovering from surgery. Mothers and fathers clutch the tiny, IV-clad hands of their sleeping children as they look forlornly into space, their intricately coloured clothing wrinkled from yet another sleepless night. The ward feels forgotten by time, but somewhere amidst the tarnished walls and crumpled clothing, amidst the calloused hands and merciful eyes, amidst a world I have entered and do not yet fully understand, there lies an unparalleled serenity.

As the years go on, perhaps the walls will crumble further, perhaps doctors will come and go, and perhaps the children I have seen will bring their own children to this place. But I will never forget consulting patients with Dr. Opoku, the humble eyes of Dr. Kando, and the rest of the team Kingsley has assembled that bring these buildings to life.

Saboba needs more people like you.

The world needs more people like you.