Former Chief Executive of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Dr Felix Anyah has accused the Ministry of Health of refusing to construct a new emergency centre which he believes will address the ‘no bed syndrome’ despite the fact that the funds were secured five years ago.

According to him, the new one would have been ten times the bed capacity of the existing emergency centre and improve on the acute shortage of beds in the largest referral hospital in the country.

The disturbing issue of ‘no bed syndrome’ has been brought to the fore in the wake of the death of a 70-year-old man after he was turned away by seven different hospitals in Accra for lack of beds.

Prince Anthony Opoku Acheampong, the CEO of Printhony Printing Press in Adabraka, a suburb of Accra finally died in his car at the LEKMA Hospital after he was turned away from the Adabraka branch of C&J Hospital, Korle Bu Polyclinic, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the Ridge hospital.

The other hospitals he was turned away from include the Police Hospital, the Trust Hospital and finally the LEKMA hospital. The son of the deceased, Obiri Yeboah took to social media at the weekend to share the sad events leading to his father’s death.

Dr Anyah in an interview with Joy News revealed that all attempts to get the Ministry of Health to urgently release the money has failed while people lose their lives in avoidable deaths.

“…It’s sad that we’ve allowed certain things to happen which we shouldn’t have allowed if somebody is ready with money to give us, few people are sitting on monies…I can show you documents that even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has written. This letter says our attention is being drawn that the right to make withdrawals from the Kuwaiti Fund Loan expired on 30th December 2017.

There’s money to build an accident and emergency unit, and what we have is nowhere near this. The Kuwaiti Fund, Saudi, Bardia they all come together and they’re all going to do this. For almost six years people are sitting down chopping into this money,” a worried Dr Anyah stated.