Ghana's Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has said although his ministry has made proposals for the establishment of two psychiatric hospitals in the five regions up north, it is still awaiting funds for the projects.

Mr Agyeman-Manu told parliament on Thursday, 13 June 2019 that he is not certain when the funds will be made available by the ministry of finance to enable him to bring his plans into fruition.

Responding to a question by the Member of Parliament for Mion, Mr Mohammed Abdul-Aziz, Mr Agyeman-Manu said: "Since I joined the ministry, I've signed and submitted close to 60 proposals for funding from the ministry of finance.

"I've been doing weekly follow-ups but because of the financial challenges that we find ourselves in and our IMF engagements, the ministry of finance has not been able to actually deal with our request.

"Despite the fact that we have exited the IMF programme, our finance ministry say they still need a little bit of space to create the necessary financial space that will accommodate the proposals that we're looking for.

"The most important thing is that this is in our medium-term plan. It is not only the psychiatric facility; we're looking at establishing an oncology centre at the Tamale Teaching Hospital to deal with cancers in the five regions up north. So, we are only waiting for the ministry of finance to give us a trigger that: 'We are ready for you, let us go and take this funding' so that we can move.

"But we seem to have overborrowed and, therefore, the [ministry of] finance is also being a little bit cautious in order not to destabilise the stability we have managed to achieve over the last three years. So, I'll not be able to actually tell you when precisely I will lay hands on funds to actually do what we have on our plans”.

Mr Agyeman-Manu also hinted at his ministry's plan to scale up the training of more psychiatric nurses to meet the increasing demand in the country.