West African Rescue Association (WARA), is the leading private medical assistance and ground ambulance rescue service in Ghana, West Africa. We provide a range of medical services to individuals, families or companies who decide to take out a membership agreement with us to allow them to enjoy and benefit from our services.
CORE SERVICES OF WEST AFRICAN RESCUE ASSOCIATION
Our organization has been in operation since 2004. We run a ground ambulance service within the greater Accra – Tema region and air rescue services throughout the remoter parts of Ghana. In addition, we also provide air rescue in the greater West African Region. These are medical rescue flights from capital cities where there are international airports, back to Accra for medical stabilization.
Our medical assistance team consists of a diverse group of health care professionals with extensive medical expertise. Our response services are ably supported by response vehicles, ambulances and equipment consisting of a full range of emergency rescue equipment, as would be found and utilized in any emergency rescue organization in a first world environment. We invite interested persons to pass by our offices and view our ambulances, response vehicles and medical equipment at any time.
If you wish to become a fully signed up member of WARA, please contact us directly, either by telephone or by email, or personally visit our offices in Labone. Please click on CONTACTS section for any further details on how to reach us. Also available is a directional map which can be downloaded in this section and can be followed to locate our offices.
We offer a variety of packages which require a minimum membership agreement of six months for all those resident in Ghana. We also offer visitor packages on a month to month basis for tourists or short term contractors or consultants to the region.
We are an on the ground based emergency rescue service provider and NOT an insurance company. Your membership gives you 24 hour access, 7 days a week, to our ambulance response team and medical services. Your membership with us however does not cover your hospital bill, diagnostics, and consultations with specialists or air rescue bills. These will either be invoiced to you separately or will be paid by yourself directly at the medical facility where you are treated.
Your membership with us covers
- 24/7 standby response
- all telephonic consultations with us,
- emergency responses are attended by our highly trained medical staff who will respond either with a response vehicle or ambulance, depending on your need. In the Accra – Tema area.
- ambulance transfers to the hospital or from one hospital to another
- medical consumables utilized during the emergency for stabilization purposes are a part of the services we provide.
- access to our Medical Director and our Psychologist. (But non urgent consultations with them will be paid separately)
- access through our medical team to our well established network of the best physician specialists in Ghana.
- Medical assistance through our ongoing and developing regional network should you require assistance outside of Accra. Our network not only includes contacts with but also established working agreements with all the best diagnostic, testing and treatment facilities Accra has to offer.
- Liaison and facilitation of international repatriations through your insurance company
- Daily hospital visits if you are admitted into hospital
- Facilitation of air rescue throughout Ghana
As the sole representative of West African Rescue Association E.V., WARA is involved in a number of projects on their behalf which benefit the over all health care system in Ghana. This is seen as a humanitarian attempt aimed at improving modern rescue techniques in a developing environment.
We offer free basic life support and advanced life support training to all of the health care facilities with whom we work. This includes groups of doctors and nurses and sometime security guards and drivers at various institutions. We look forward extending this by working with the National Disaster Management Office (NADMO). We hope through this to extend our trainings to all the task forces in Ghana thereby assisting the country in the preparation for any unforeseen eventuality of a natural catastrophe. This will directly increase the number of first aid providers in diverse communities. In addition our ambulance response fleet has become a part of the national response locally to assist in any major air disaster.
We do blood donations and hope with time to become a regular and reliable supplier to the major blood bank in Ghana. With a high road accident rate blood is often in short supply in Ghana. We look forward to being able to provide various areas in need with healthy blood donations through the major blood bank in Accra.
In addition we regularly offer free vaccinations such as meningitis for example in an attempt boost local health care in the community.
We are a registered member of the Global Compact. This is the world’s largest and most global voluntary corporate responsibility initiative with over 2,729 companies from more than 90 different countries.
A brief overview of Health Care in Ghana:
As in any developing country, health care can be complex. Ghana is no exception. You can not expect to find all your medical needs met at any one health care facility. In addition health care can vary at any one facility dramatically depending upon who is on duty or what facilities are working and which are out of order.
The various facilities with whom we work with each have their unique area of core competence where we have found good doctors and specialists with whom to work. They are not all found under one ‘roof’. Many of the more complex modern diagnostic equipment such as: MRI and CAT Scans can be regularly out of order, due to power fluctuations and difficulties in expertise to repair them. A part of our operational management is to keep a constant flow of updated information as to who is on duty or on leave and where to access any procedures at any one time through our established network.
Ghana’s medical expertise and health care has developed dramatically over the past few years and continues to develop. Along with this comes the constant growth in the general population of the city and the stress on limited health care resources. Many of the larger emergency rooms are overwhelmed with patients and access into any specialized facilities can be challenging and more importantly can take a long time which is not ideal when in a life threatening crisis.
Our network consists of over 25 different heath care and diagnostic facilities and a network of over 90 specialist doctors. We ensure that in a time of need you gain accessibility to such specialists and that you are admitted into the most appropriate facility for your particular illness or injury.
Through a lot of hard work and time our organization has established and developed good working relationships with this network which are accessible to us in a time of need. As a WARA member, most of your stabilization will be done on site or in our ambulance en route to the facility and not in a local emergency room. This way we save precious time, which is of great benefit to the patient. It also means that our medics will stay with you as long as it is necessary until we can hand you over to a team with which we know can provide you with the appropriate health care which you require.
In addition, we will ensure that if and when a second opinion is required you gain contact with the best specialists that Ghana has to offer. We make the necessary links for you and also provide professional ambulance services from the scene of the medical crisis to the hospital and from hospital to hospital in the event you require additional diagnostics that are not available where you have been admitted.
