The “Agenda 111” Hospital Project, whose sod was cut in August 2021, will be completed, according to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Eighty-six (86) district hospitals, two (2) regional psychiatric hospitals, and the western regional hospital are currently under construction and are all at varying stages of completion, according to President Akufo-Addo.
Speaking at the commissioning of the St. Michael’s Specialist Hospital, on Saturday, 30th September 2023, at Abeka Lapaz, the President stated that “the average completion rate of the eighty-nine (89) ongoing projects is fifty-two percent (52%), with work at some of the sites being seventy to eighty percent complete.”
He told the gathering that the constructions of these 89 hospitals are being undertaken by indigenous Ghanaian contractors, who have provided direct and indirect jobs to Ghanaians.
The President stated that each construction site has an average of one hundred and twenty (120) workers, and that once work is finished, an average of five hundred and forty-nine (549) people will work in a district hospital, an average of one thousand, three hundred and forty-three (1,343) in a regional hospital, and an average of nine hundred and forty-seven (947) in a psychiatric hospital.
The Agenda 111 hospitals will therefore employ 67,635 (sixty-seven thousand, six hundred and thirty-five) people, he stated.
The Agenda 111 initiative is providing 101 standard 100-bed district hospitals with space for doctors and nurses in districts without district hospitals, 6 new regional hospitals for each of the 6 new regions, the rehabilitation of the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region, the construction of 1 new regional hospital for the Western Region, and 2 psychiatric hospitals for two of the three (3) zones of the nation, namely the Middle and North. The total price of the package is put at USD$1.765 billion.
“Beyond the building of these new healthcare facilities, my vision is to help make Ghana the Centre of Excellence for Medical Care in West Africa by 2030, leveraging on Ghana’s favourable status in the Region as the most peaceful country in West Africa, a beacon of democracy on the continent, and a land of opportunities,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo reaffirmed his government’s is committed to improving access to essential and quality health services through the provision of the necessary health infrastructure, equipment and logistics, including the deployment of appropriate technology as part of the country’s drive to attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Since 2017, the President noted that his government has restored nursing trainee allowances, recruited the highest number of healthcare workers in the history of the 4th Republic, with fifty-eight thousand and forty-one (58,041) health workers employed to supplement the existing health sector workforce at the height of COVID-19 alone.
“The Ghana Ambulance Service has been equipped with three hundred and seven (307) ambulances, that is 1-Constituency-1-Ambulance, in comparison to the fifty-five (55) ‘semi-functioning’ ambulances that existed during the time of the Mahama government. We have made improvements in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to make access easier, and we are using drones to deliver emergency medical supplies to remote areas,” he added.
SOURCE: 3news
