News:
February 10, 2021
Minister for Health designate, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has revealed to the Appointment Committee that about thirteen districts are yet to offer lands for the construction of districts hospitals across the country.
According to him this has contributed to the delays in the construction of these hospitals, which was the president’s vision which was supposed to be translated into action.
He further noted that, a Committee was set up at the presidency led by the Chief of Staff of which he was a member and representation from the Ghana Health Service to work on achieving that objective.
“What they asked us to do immediately was to write to all the district directors for health services to allocate land and give us the site plans of where they want these district hospitals to be sited. As I speak, we still have close to about 13 districts that have not completed this exercise,” the Minister designate said.
In 2020, President Nana Akufo-Addo had announced the construction of hospitals in some 88 districts across the country to augment government’s efforts at containing COVID-19.
“There are 88 districts in our country without district hospitals; we have six (6) new regions without regional hospitals; we do not have five infectious disease control centres dotted across the country, and we do not have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVD-19.”
“We must do something urgently about this. That is why the Government has decided to undertake a major investment in our healthcare infrastructure, the largest in our history. We will, this year, begin constructing 88 hospitals in the districts without hospitals,” the President had said.
The construction of these hospitals has however not begun as promised by the President.
The Health Minister-designate during his vetting by the Appointments Committee in Parliament on, Wednesday, February 10, 2021, said the government is working assiduously to ensure that the construction begins this year.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com