Akufo-Addo’s 94 hospitals promise knee-jerk – Mahama

Former President John Mahama has described President Akufo-Addo’s promise to construct 94 new hospitals in one year as knee-jerk and reactionary. According to the NDC flagbearer, even though there is the need to improve on health infrastructure, the plan at doing so must be credible and well thought-through.

“When even more investment is required to augment the existing health infrastructure, it is important that the plan to do so is credible and clearly thought-through. What we should avoid is knee-jerk promises that appear reactive rather than

products of critical thinking and well-coordinated response to an existing or emerging problem,” Mr. Mahama noted during the second edition of his Digital Conversation Thursday. He also took shots at critics of his health infrastructure saying they were uninformed.

“It has been widely acknowledged that some of the critical investments that we [NDC administration] made in the health sector has been extremely useful and enabled Ghana to lessen the impact of this pandemic on our people and our nation. This acknowledgement bears out the vision and clear thinking that went into the massive investments we made in the health sector.

“There were uninformed and snipped remarks at the time with some questioning why many facilities were constructed. We were acutely aware however that these investments were necessary to modernise a very fragile and weak health system.”

President  Akufo-Addo in a national address on government’s efforts at curbing the virus last Sunday said government has taken the decision to deliver new hospitals in the 94 districts in the country without hospitals.

“There are 88 districts in our country without hospitals. We have six new regions without regional hospitals. We do not have infectious disease control centres dotted across the country and we don’t have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVID-19. We must do something urgently about this.

He said: “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.

It will mean 10 in Ashanti, nine in Volta, nine in Central, eight in Eastern, seven in Greater Accra, seven in Upper East, five in Northern, five in Oti, five in Upper West, five in Bono, four in Western North, four in Western, three in Ahafo, three in Savannah, two in Bono East and two in North-Easter regions”.