The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei-Mensah, has rejected claims that the government has abandoned hospital projects in the region.
He insisted that the projects, including those inherited from the previous administration, are at various stages of completion, while others are operational.
The Minister says some of the projects have been commissioned and are currently in use, while efforts are being made to complete others by the first quarter of 2024.
The Ashanti Region has a total of 32 hospital projects that are either ongoing, completed, or in use, but the current administration has come under pressure for not completing the major ones on time.
However, speaking during a meeting with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives in the Ashanti Region, Mr. Osei-Mensah insisted that major facilities, including Agenda 111 and VAMED projects, will be completed by 2024.
“All along, people were saying that the government had abandoned hospital projects in the region but as I have shown you, none of them have been abandoned and most of them have been commissioned and are in use and the few ones that have not been commissioned are also 95 percent complete. So hopefully, by the end of the first quarter of 2024, those ones will have been completed.”
The Ashanti Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang, also said facilities within Greater Kumasi, upon completion, will be converted into specialist hospitals to ease pressure on the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
“When you go to the Greater Accra region, there are so many hospitals that when you have a crisis, you will go. But when you come to Kumasi, it is only Komfo Anokye, and it is a teaching hospital. So you have to get primary care and secondary care before tertiary care. But we do not have that here, and so everybody is moving to Komfo Anokye, which is increasing the workload. Anytime you increase the workload, the quality of care will go down.
The strategy is that we need to have more of these hospitals to cushion Komfo Anokye. So all the hospitals that will be opened, we will convert them into specialist hospitals to reduce the referrals that are going to Komfo Anokye.”
