Government has disclosed its decision to engage Ghanaian owned contractors to design and build 88 district hospitals across the country under government’s agenda 111 program for efficient and accessible health care delivery.
Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta told parliament in the 2020 mid-year budget review on Thursday that the decision to seek local capacity in constructing the hospitals is to develop Ghanaian owned construction companies.
The Finance Minister said “Mr Speaker, the pandemic has brought to fore the structural gaps in our health delivery system and that is why with urgency, we have already began to mount an effective coordinated and sustainable long term reforms to the health needs of the people. Under the agenda 111 previously under agenda 88 initiative of his Excellency the President, we will design, build and equip new district hospitals without one and new regional hospitals for region with none”.
He disclosed further that “These will all be designed and built by Ghanaian companies”.
According to him, the move will launch Ghanaian construction companies onto a path of a nationwide housing program.
He reiterated government’s decision to see through its promise of ensuring that every district in Ghana has a hospital while six regions that do not have regional hospitals get newly constructed referral facilities.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo disclosed in his eighth address to the nation on the management of COVID-19 that “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 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 standard 100 -bed facilities which will be in districts without hospitals will also have accommodation for staff.
