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The “Agenda 111” Hospital Project, whose sod was cut in August 2021, is still on the government’s agenda, according to President of the Republic Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Eighty-six (86) district hospitals, two (2) regional mental hospitals, and the western regional hospital are all ongoing projects that are all in various stages of completion, according to President Akufo-Addo.
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,” at the commissioning of the St. Michael’s Specialist Hospital on Saturday, September 30, 2023, in Abeka Lapaz.
He informed the audience that native Ghanaian contractors were building these 89 hospitals, creating both direct and indirect jobs for Ghanaians.
“There is an average number of one hundred and twenty (120) workers on each construction site, and, when completed, an average of five hundred and forty-nine (549) persons will be employed in a district hospital, one thousand, three hundred and forty-three (1,343) in a regional hospital, and nine hundred and forty-seven (947) in each psychiatric hospital,” the President said.
“This means that sixty-seven thousand, six hundred and thirty-five (67,635) people will be employed in the Agenda 111 hospitals” he added.
The Agenda 111 initiative will build 101 standard 100-bed district hospitals with room for doctors and nurses in districts without district hospitals, six new regional hospitals for each of the six new regions, renovate the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region, construct one new regional hospital for the Western Region, and construct two psychiatric hospitals for two of the three (3) zones of the nation, namely the Middle and North. The total price of the package is pegged 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.
As part of the nation’s effort to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), President Akufo-Addo reaffirmed that his government is committed to enhancing access to crucial and high-quality health services by providing the necessary infrastructure, gear, and logistics, including the deployment of appropriate technology.
The President noted that since 2017, his administration has reinstated nursing trainee allowances and hired the most healthcare professionals in the history of the Fourth Republic, including 58,041 at the height of COVID-19, who were employed to supplement the existing health sector workforce.
“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,” President Akufo-Addo said.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
