There are plans to upgrade the Aniigazanga Clinic in the Upper East Regional capital of Bolgatanga to a Municipal Hospital, Rex Asanga, Municipal Chief Executive for the area has revealed.
Speaking in an interview on State of Our Nation on Monday, February 5, 2024, Rex Asanga disclosed that plans of establishing a Municipal Hospital in the capital to ease the pressure on the Regional health facility has been on the drawingboard for sometime now.
He said the initial plan was to convert a CHPs Compound at Sokabiisi into a hospital for the Municipality.
However, that has changed and the Health Directorate is now considering the Aniigazanga Clinic.
“We need a municipal hospital and I’m happy that the Municipal Health Directorate has it among their plans. The health Directorate some years back had thought that we could upgrade the Sokabiisi CHPS Compound. And there is quite a land around. We could upgrade that into a Municipal Hospital if we had funding,” he stated.
“But in recent times, these plans have changed a bit. The Health Directorate is thinking that we should rather the Aniigazangs Clinic or Health Center if you may calm it that way. So we are thinking of that facility being upgraded into a Municipal Hospital if we get some funding. That’s the reason two qualified medical doctors have been posted to Bolga”.
Mr. Asanga stressed that the need to establish a hospital in the capital to take care of the the primary health needs of its ever-increasing population has become critical following similar plans of upgrading the Regional Hospital to a Teaching Hospital for teaching practices by the CK Tedam University of Technology and Applied Science’s medical school.
“It will soon become a teaching hospital from the information that I’m gathering. So when that happens, the doors of the hospital will not be opened just for anybody to walk in there and treat pains, and headache. And that is the more reason I believe that having municipal hospital will be very good,” he stated.
When that happens, the regional capital will be left with no befitting public health facility to cater for the health needs of its residents, he observed.
It is on the back of this that the Municipal authorities are making frantic efforts to establish such a facility.
But for the unavailability of funding, Mr. Asanga stated that the Municipality is ready to begin the building of the hospital.
His revelation comes just days after flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama pledged to build a polyclinic in Bolgatanga if he is made president again.
