A DENTAL School has been opened at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi.
The school is an initiative of the College of Health Sciences of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (KNUST) and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
The facility that will be used for the professional training of students in dentistry has been inaugurated.
Eight students, two of them females, have been enrolled as pioneers of the dental school with the expectation that they will be trail blazers for the training of world class, ethical, entrepreneurial and research oriented dental surgeons, capable of addressing the oral health care needs of Ghanaians.
It was the old KATH administration block which was refurbished and converted to create the needed space for the clinical and dental laboratory school.
The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) provided GH¢300,000.00 for the rehabilitation of the block and procurement of equipment and supplies for the project, while the College of Health Sciences of the KNUST contributed GH¢150,000 through its internally generated funds (IGF) to support it.
The school has a 15 –seater lecture room, a library, three rooms for clinical care, an office for the dean and a central supply and sterilisation department.
Addressing a cross section of the public who attended the ceremony, the Vice Chancellor of the KNUST, Professor Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa assured that the university “has plans to construct a complex to house the dental school”.
He said the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) had already recommended it for provisional accreditation, giving the assurance that “with the completion of this project, which was one of the basic requirements of the National Accreditation Board (NAB) for the clinical programme, it is our hope, that the programme will receive accreditation from both the NAB and the Medical and Dental Council”.
He said the idea of establishing the dental school conceived several years ago, formed part of their vision of responding to “national development aspirations in our attempt to provide a conducive environment for the training of science and technology graduates”.
Professor Adarkwa said the KNUST had already carved a niche for itself “as a centre of excellence for the training of important human resources for the nation” assuring that, they would continue to commit themselves to the training of human resources capable of meeting the needs of Ghanaians.
In his address, the Provost of the College of Health Sciences of the KNUST, Professor Peter Donkor, said the commissioning of the Dental School, “ marks a very important stage in our journey towards producing home-grown dental surgeons“.
Recalling the support that made it possible for the commissioning of the project, Pro. Donkor said they would continue to nurture the pioneer students for them to attain their goal of becoming dental surgeons.
Expressing concern about the limited number of dentists in the country, he said Ghana with an estimated population of 20 million, has only 120 dentists, 70 per cent of whom are based in Accra and Kumasi.
He said the country needs more dental and other oral health personnel “to ensure availability of oral health services throughout the country”.
This, he said, would make it possible for the dentists to “tackle the backlog of untreated dental diseases, tackle new and emerging diseases and provide ongoing care to the public”.
Prof. Donkor said the increase of dentists would also make it possible for them to deal with a growing and ageing population, as well as providing preventive and specialists services.
He explained that this could only be achieved “when there are enough dentists, evenly distributed throughout the whole country” stressing that “we need to train more of them in a community-oriented way to ensure they remain in Ghana to serve the nation”.
Prof. Donkor said “Ghanaians deserve comprehensive health services, including oral health services, they also deserve tooth cleaning or scaling, tooth straightening or orthodontics and other preventive and sophisticated tooth preserving services”.
Prof. Donkor stressed the need to expand the school’s infrastructure, since that dentistry was highly specialised and different specialists were required for the clinical training, so staff recruitment and development, will remain a priority for the school”.
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