Korle Bu MRI suffers another breakdown

Page 72: Daily Graphic, July 23, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI) machine at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital is out of order again.
The MRI, which was inaugurated on July 27, 2005, broke down in May, 2007 due to the absence of a stabiliser to regulate and protect power supply to its Computed Tomography (CT) Scan and took more than a year before it was reconditioned.
The breakdown resulted in the flying out of Ghanaian footballer John Paintsil to Nigeria for medical examination, during the Ghana 2008 Cup of Nations.
Daily Graphic enquiries about the facility has revealed that the MRI at Korle-Bu became dysfunctional after it corroded and after power fluctuation at the hospital resulted in the burning of some key machinery.
The MRI is primarily used in medical imaging to visualise the structure and function of the body. It provides detailed images of the body in any plane and has much greater soft tissue contrast than CT, making it especially useful in neurological, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and oncolological diseases.
Unlike the CT, it uses no ionising radiation.
The Head of the Radiology Department of the hospital, Dr Alex Yeboah, told the Daily Graphic that this time round, inadequate water supply to the cheeler which cools the machine caused the breakdown.
He explained that the cheeler needed consistent water supply to ensure operations of the machine but no provision was made for a water reservoir and a pumping machine.
He said several attempts to draw the attention of the authorities to the anomaly proved futile.
He said his attention had just been drawn to the fact that there had been a leakage in the cooling system and that meant that the leakage would have to be repaired before working on the main system.
Dr Yeboah explained that although the MRI was still under warranty, it did not make business and patient-care sense to allow the machine to lie idle when all measures could have been taken to ensure that the purposes for which it was installed were realised.
He was, however, happy that the 37 Military Hospital had just installed an MRI machine while a private institution was also setting up another centre to provide options to patients.