First Lady commissions The Atlantic Lounge at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.
The Atlantic Lounge, a waiting area for family and friends of patients admitted at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) has been duly commissioned and handed over to the hospital by the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo.
The Lounge built and donated to the hospital by First Atlantic Bank as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), is to bring to a stop the usual sight of family, caregivers, visitors and friends sitting under trees, loitering around the hospital, and sometimes sleeping around the premises of the hospital in wait for the approved time to visit admitted relatives and friends.
With the construction of the Atlantic Lounge, visitors, caregivers, family members, and friends of admitted patients will no longer have to sit under trees, loiter around or even sleep around the premises of the hospital.
The Atlantic Lounge which is well ventilated in accordance with the Covid protocols has an upper and lower terrace with washrooms, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), and a seating capacity of 150 people.
Commissioning the beautiful edifice at a short ceremony at the forecourt of the hospital children’s block, the First Lady thanked First Atlantic Bank for the construction of the lounge which will serve some 1,500 people who make daily visits to friends and relatives at the hospital.
“After commissioning the pediatric centre in 2019 and just as I was about to leave, I saw people sitting under trees and at the car parks waiting to visit their loved ones admitted to the hospital. I then thought about the hospital having a waiting area and then approached several banks which included First Atlantic Bank [sic].”
“First Atlantic Bank offered to help, culminating into the lounge we see erected here today. I thank First Atlantic Bank for the lounge, this is a way of the bank showing its human face and helping the customers that contribute to the bank’s bottom line as well as contributing to the social capital of the country [sic],” remarked the First Lady.
Speaking also at the ceremony was the Board Chairman of First Atlantic Bank, Amarquaye Armar who stated that “The Atlantic Lounge, which is the third major CSR project undertaken by the bank, will provide much-needed relief to all visitors, especially mothers, children, and the physically challenged, who unfortunately have had to loiter around and wait for health personnel to give them feedback and updates on the condition of relatives on admission at this hospital.”
“It is our firm belief that this lounge will remain “fit-for-purpose” to lessen the distress and fatigue that mothers, children, and the public in general, so often experience whenever they visit Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital,” added Mr Armar.
First Atlantic Bank in 2018, successfully built and handed over a well-equipped “Mother and Baby Care Unit” to the people of Talensi in the Upper East Region, the very first of its CSR. Subsequently in 2019, the bank built and successfully handed over a Classroom Unit to expand facilities available at the Cape Coast School for the Blind and Deaf.
Over the years, First Atlantic Bank has been engaged in several other interventions to enhance the wellbeing of all the communities it operates in.
Chief Executive Officer of KBTH, Opoku Ware Ampomah, also delivering a short address at the ceremony called for more investments from corporate organisations to help make the health facility a medical tourism hub as envisioned by the President, Nana Akufo-Addo.
The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital constructed in the year 1923, is the third-largest referral hospital in the West African sub-region. The hospital currently has a bed capacity of 2,000 beds.
