A girl bent double in pain and standing alone on a Ghana road 15 years ago inspired Maltese philanthropists to open an academic medical centre in sub-Saharan Africa.

“I felt helpless when I saw a 12-year-old girl in pain and could do nothing about it. I realised she could die from what could be simple appendicitis and no one would know of her passing away,” Mario Cappello, president of the HopeXchange NGO, told this newspaper.

The day after he spotted the girl, Mr Cappello spoke to the Archbishop of Kumasi, and the Catholic Archdiocese granted the NGO a piece of land there, in the second-largest Ghanaian city.

The HopeXchange medical centre, which is available for about 1.7 million people who live in the region and has just launched a paediatric surgical department, ensures the sustainability of high quality patient care by sponsoring local biomedical research and supporting local medical education.

“Without good research, there can be no good education, and without good education, there can be no medical treatment. The three are dependent on each other, so, instead of feeding people fish, we are sponsoring the proverbial fishing rod,” Mr Cappello said.

The sub-Saharan region suffers from an increasing brain drain in the medical field, as those with expertise have nowhere to practise the profession and therefore seek employment overseas.

The HopeXchange medical centre is mainly focused on caring for women and children.

Without the adequate equipment, no doctor would risk performing medical operations, Mr Cappello said.

Without good research, there can be no good education, and without good education, there can be no medical treatment. The three depend on each other

Therefore, one of the centre’s main aims is to provide an adequate space where professionals can conduct laboratory and clinical research to prevent or treat diseases of public health significance in Ghana, notably infectious diseases and cancer.

In the meantime, specialists are flown in from abroad to teach medical students. This is done on a voluntary basis.

The HopeXchange medical centre reaches out to people in rural areas.

The centre has also entered into partnerships with hospitals abroad to immediately start diagnosing ailments such as cancer.

“The region lacks pathologists, leading to numerous cancer misdiagnoses. It would take six years to train a pathologist but only around a month to train technicians, who can prepare a slide with a tissue sample and send it to Boston via telemedicine [over the internet].

“Once it reaches the pathologists in Boston, they can send back an accurate diagnosis within hours,” Mr Cappello said.

The HopeXchange medical centre was built with the help of Maltese funds.

The medical centre operates under the direction of HopeXchange – a group of people with expertise in healthcare, business, law and philanthropy based across the globe – in collaboration with the Ghana Mission Foundation of Malta.

A nurse and her charges.

HopeXchange traces its roots to Malta, specifically to the Institute for World Evangelisation, founded by Mr Cappello and his wife, Anna. It is the only Maltese lay association recognised by the Vatican.

The medical centre’s doors are open to anyone, irrespective of creed or financial means. In part, it remains sustainable by charging a fee to those who can afford it while providing the services for free to the poor.

Built on 6.15 acres of land, the hospital provides inpatient and outpatient services and hosts, among others, a paediatric ward, three surgical operating theatres, an intensive care unit, a research laboratory, a vaccination centre, a blood bank, a pharmacy and educational rooms.

Its main specialisations are paediatric cardiothoracic surgery, breast and cervical cancer, ophthalmology, infectious diseases and maxillofacial surgery because of the high number of cleft lip cases in the region. It organises outreach visits to rural areas for those who have not heard of the centre or have no means to reach it.

Asked what keeps the NGO going, knowing it can only reach a fraction of the vast population in the region, Mr Cappello pointed out that every drop creates a ripple effect.

“We concentrate on helping out individuals. If we reach one person in a thousand, it means the world to him if we save his life. Our aim is to improve the situation, one person at a time,” he said.

While about 70 per cent of the hospital’s salaries are paid by the government, the NGO still needs to cover the remaining 30 per cent, apart from covering the costs of maintaining the cutting-edge equipment.

The NGO is planning to set up a similar hospital in Guatemala.

Find more information on http://hopexchangemedicalcenter.org .

In numbers

■ 24.2 per cent of the 27.5 million people in Ghana live in poverty.
■ 70 per cent of the world total of new HIV infections are in Africa.
■ 90 per cent of the 5.9 million blind people in Africa reside in the sub-Saharan area.
■ 60 to 70 per cent of women with breast cancer meet a doctor for the first time when cancer is already at stage 3 or 4.
■ Malaria kills 600,000 people around the world every year.

The staff at the HopeXchange medical centre are local people.

The newly opened paediatric surgical department.

The centre has been furnished with cutting-edge technology such as the equipment in this operating room.