Ghana Tech Lab Partners GIZ To Donate PPEs To Health Ministry
Ghana Tech Lab (GTL), a tech hub and startup accelerator, in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a German development agency has donated PPE’s to the Ministry of Health to aid in the fight against COVID 19.
The donation was made under the auspices of Makers Assemble Distribution, which was held at the premises of the Ministry of Health in Accra.
The PPE’s were produced by 20 young Ghanaian innovators under the Makers Assemble initiative organized by GTL, GIZ and Make-IT in Africa, a tech entrepreneurship initiative that seeks to promote digital innovation for sustainable and inclusive development in Africa.
They consisted of 500 respirators, 520 face shields,15 contactless handwashing machines and 50 thermometer guns.
Presenting the items, the Executive Director of GTL, Mr. Jorge Appiah emphasized on the need to promote local innovations among the youth to solve national problems.
He explained that “all these solutions are 100% locally made, and was developed by innovators with an average age of 23 years. So it tells us that we can solve our problems and build solutions at scale in addressing some challenges ”.
“We hope that these PPE’s that we have been able to present today can go a long way in helping the fight against the COVID19 by the Ministry and health community”, he added.
Receiving the items, Mr Kwabena Boadu Oku-Afari, Chief Director, Ministry of Health expressed his enthusiasm on receiving the PPE’s and commended GTL and GIZ for their donation to the Ministry.
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Mr. Gerald Guskowski, the Cluster Coordinator for GIZ commended the innovative approach of using digital technologies to produce COVID19 medical items.
He further stated that, “it is no secret that the success of this project has been facilitated by the Ministry of Health. We are very grateful for your dedication to this fight against the virus and your openness to accept alternate and local means of production".
The Makers Assemble! project was introduced with the aim of mobilizing resources and supporting local innovators to build solutions that can help frontline workers in their operations during COVID19.
In addition, the project sought to enhance the skills and capacity of these Makers to position them to be innovative by means of digital production specifically 3D printing to produce products such as nose masks, ventilators, respirators and handwashing mechanisms.
tag: Ghana Tech Lab, covid-19, Ministry of Health, PPEs, GIZ,
Dorcas Benewaa Author
Dorcas is an upcoming journalist. She loves the creative arts and loves to write about startups, digital arts and issues in the tech sector.