Historic Milestone: St. Mary Catholic Hospital, Drobo Launches 75th Anniversary Celebration, Honouring Decades of Compassionate Healthcare
For three-quarters of a century, this hospital on the edge of the Bono Region has been the first, and sometimes last hope for thousands of families. On Thursday, it paused to remember the hands that built it, and asked the world to help carry it forward.
Bishop Gyamfi officially unveils the St. Mary Catholic Hospital 75th Anniversary Logo, flanked by local dignitaries and community leaders. The board reads: “75 Years of Excellence: The Past, Present and The Future — 1952–2027.”
There are hospitals built from stone and steel. And there are hospitals built from something harder to name — from sacrifice, from calling, from the quiet decision of people who came to a small Ghanaian town and gave it their lives. St. Mary Catholic Hospital in Drobo is the second kind.
On Thursday, May 28, 2026, beneath a morning sky alive with the bright sound of the Our Lady of Providence Senior High School Brass Band, the hospital officially opened its diamond jubilee celebrations under the theme: “75 Years of Excellence: The Past, The Present and The Future.” Dignitaries, traditional leaders, healthcare workers, and community members packed the grounds to reckon with what 75 years of healing actually means in human terms.
“No work is like handling the most precious gift”
Catholic Bishop of Sunyani and President of Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, addressed the doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, and the chief leaders in the audience about the Church’s role as the continuing healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
He spoke first of the pioneers — the early healthcare workers who arrived in Drobo generations ago, built this institution with their hands, and are now gone. “They are rendering account of their services to their Maker,” the Bishop said quietly, “whose healing ministry they participated in, and whose healing ministry you are contributing to now.”
“Life is the most precious gift any human being can ever have. There is no work like being a doctor, a nurse, a midwife, a paramedic. No work is like handling, repairing, restoring the most precious gift God has given anybody. Nobody can pay you adequately.”
— Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, Catholic Bishop of Sunyani
For many of the frontline staff sitting in that audience — workers who manage long shifts, equipment shortages, and the weight of lives in their hands every single day — it was, perhaps, the acknowledgement they had long needed to hear.
From a single room to a regional lifeline
Hospital Administrator Rev. Sr. Celestina Thomas painted the arc of the institution’s history with the economy of someone who has lived it. What began as a modest clinic — a few rooms, a handful of staff, a community with enormous need — has grown into a sprawling facility providing specialised maternal care, advanced laboratory services, eye care, and community health outreach programs that reach deep into the surrounding villages.
Sister Celestina paid tribute to global partners like St. Janssen Hospital in the Netherlands, whose enduring partnership has helped the hospital weather its most difficult seasons. But she was equally candid about present-day realities. Behind the shortages of staff and equipment, behind the lack of adequate housing for healthcare workers, are not statistics — they are human beings. Real nurses finishing double shifts. Real families waiting. Real doctors making hard choices with limited tools.
Traditional leaders from the Drobo, Japekrom, and Awasu Traditional Councils stand alongside Bishop Gyamfi and other dignitaries — a visible testament to how deeply St. Mary’s is woven into the identity of this land.
$480,000 away from saving lives
The most urgent moment of the day came not in ceremony, but in plain speech. St. Mary Catholic Hospital — a major regional facility serving the Jaman South Municipality and neighbouring border communities — does not have a CT scanner. The price of one: $480,000. A sum that feels enormous in the abstract, and devastating in context.
This is not a technical footnote. When a patient arrives at the emergency room with a severe head injury, a suspected stroke, or internal bleeding from a road accident, the doctors cannot see inside the body. They cannot diagnose. Instead, they must stabilise a fragile, frightened person and refer them for a CT scan at the regional capital or beyond — a journey of many miles on roads that are not always kind. For patients in critical condition, that journey is not merely inconvenient. It is often fatal. Some simply do not make it.
The hospital is still actively calling for donations and support from individuals, organisations, and global partners to reach the $480,000 target.
The jubilee celebration included a fundraising appeal — a first, hopeful step — but the hospital still has a long road ahead to reach its $480,000 goal. St. Mary Catholic Hospital is calling on international charitable organisations, global development partners, and philanthropists to help close that gap. A CT scanner on these grounds would mean no more referrals into the unknown. No more families watching a loved one loaded into a vehicle and sent miles away in crisis. It would mean that when the most urgent moment arrives, the answer is here.
A community that refuses to let go
The event, chaired by a representative of Mr. Osei Yeboah Isaac, brought together a remarkable cross-section of the people whose lives are woven together with this institution. Representative of Special Guest of Honour Odeneho Dr. Afram Brempong, Medical Director Dr. Vincent Adjei Benneh, Member of Parliament Hon. Col. Kwadwo Damoah, and Municipal Chief Executive Hon. Siata Watra all took their seats alongside traditional leaders from the Drobo, Japekrom, and Awasu Traditional Councils — a quiet but powerful symbol of how deeply St. Mary’s has rooted itself in the culture and conscience of this land.
The afternoon reached its emotional peak when Bishop Gyamfi and local dignitaries unveiled the official 75th Anniversary Logo and Cloth, followed by a community fundraiser led by Mr. Francis Amponsah. As Rev. Fr. Isaac Kyeremah gave the final benediction, something collective and unspoken moved through the crowd — a recognition that this place belongs to everyone who has ever been born here, healed here, or lost someone here.
St. Mary Catholic Hospital has spent 75 years caring for others. Now, the community is standing up to make sure it is cared for in return — and asking the wider world to stand with them.