Ganta Mission was intended to be a Medical Mission, but the Harleys included both physical and spiritual healing. Moreover they wanted to heal our people intellectually and otherwise. The Negro Spiritual below "There is a Balm in Gilead" says it all.
Below is the Winifred J. Harley College of Health Sciences (formerly called Winifred J Harley School of Nursing). The WJH CHS outgrew the small nursing school building that was attached to the hospital and today is located in a complex near the old air field area. The complex houses classrooms with appropriate labs, a computer lab and library, a student union, etc., dormitories (the old girls dorm was renovated for female nursing students and the old boys dorm (located near the hospital) was renovated for male nursing students. The college operates under the auspicies of The United Methodist University and offers a BSc in Nursing with plans to offer allied health courses of study (nurse aide, lab aide, OR aide, dental aide, etc.) for certification.
[Courtesy of Mrs. Mary Randall (Zigbuo) Mantor]
One of the classrooms
The Library
Even though the Winifred J. Harley College of Health Sciences has her own nursing students, the United Methodist University (UMU) in Monrovia collaborates with the Winifred J. Harley College of Health Sciences to train nurses. Every year nursing students from UMU who have completed their course requirements, come to Ganta to do their practical or internship at the Winifred J. Harley College of Health Sciences before they are allowed to graduate. This is a wonderful program of cooperation and partnership between the two schools.
In the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, this building housed the Examination room, the central supply room, the injection room, the operating room, the sore dressing room, and was used as the information desk where new patients were received and documented for treatment. For a long time Mr. Frank Dimmerson was the interpreter. He spoke almost alll the Languages spoken in Liberia.
The ward is where patients were hospitalized for all sorts of illnesses. This is the original Ward that was built after they moved from the dispensary near the carpenter shop. It was divided into two wards, one for men and the other for women. Each unit held 16 beds. There were also 6 private rooms and a nursing station where medications were kept to be served to patients.
Mrs. Harley specialized in Liberian Ferns. She wrote a Handbook on Liberian Ferns in 1957. It had 114 pages and was published by a private publisher, Murray Press, Wakefield, MA. She and her husband are studying some of her fern collections.
Dr. Harley inspecting A Mah (mano) Poro Mask. This Mask ended up in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University where he also studied, He studied at Yale University and the London School of Tropical Medicine in the 1920's.
If you wish to know everything about Ganta Mission, how it all started and the sacrifices made to make it possible, please read this book: A Third of A Century with George Way Harley in Liberia written by Mrs. Winifred J. Harley. The revised, edited and newly published 2019 edition by Kiiton Press can be ordered by calling 401-545-9073. $30.00 USD
PEDIATRICS AND OB WARD
"More About Jesus Would I Know." This song is optional. If you wish to play it, just click on the arrow.
Mr. Saye Didi Dolopei was one of our HONOREES last year in Philadelphi during our 15th National Reunion. Mr. Dolopei was the Chief Laboratory Technician for many years at the Ganta Mission Hospital Lab. He trained many young men and young women to be Lab Techs. He helped in saving many lives, not only students' lives, but people from many places in Liberia, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone.
In the 1940's, 50s, 60's and 70s, many of the students that enrolled at the mission school were infected with a lot of tropical diseases, such as hookworms, chistosome, trypanosome (The organism which causes African sleeping sickness, It is carried by the tsetse fly from infected cattle to human beings) and many others.
Mr. Saye Didi Dolopei would discover those harmful bacterias, in the blood, stool and urine he and his team found in the specimens the patients brought to the Lab. These specimens were examined through the microscope. Mr. Saye Didi Dolope and his team would inform the doctors and the Doctors would prescribe medications for the students. Many of the student were taken Antimony for schistosome, and Quine for malaria and some were offered some special laxity to pass out the hookworm or tapeworm. Mr. Saye Didi Dolopei helped to save many students' lives from these tropical diseases. He will always be remembered and honored by us.
Through the lenses of the Microscope, Mr. Saye Didi Dolopei Saved the lives of many of us. We are gratful and thankful.
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