Work on stalled hospital projects in Ashanti to re-start soon – Dr. Nsiah-Asare

Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has given the assurance that work on stalled hospital projects in Ashanti Region will soon resume.

He indicated that the projects could not be completed on record time but contracts have now been renewed and the Ministry of Finance was ensuring that the contractors came to site to complete these projects sooner.

The projects include a 120-bed capacity facility at Kumawu, another 120-bed project at Fomena, a 60-bed project at Konongo and same at Bekwai.

Briefing journalists at Kumawu after a tour of the facilities, Dr. Nsiah-Asare noted that, upon completion of the projects, the Region can have four functional district hospitals to complement other bigger ones and also ensure increased access to quality healthcare delivery.

Most of the projects visited have been left which had not been attended to over years and exposed to the vagaries of the weather had suffered wear and tear.
Some of them had the ceilings destroyed by the rains leading to serious leakages whiles project sites had also been overgrown with weeds and rodents with very deplorable access road networks.

The Director General was on a two-day working visit of the Region to inspect stalled hospital projects and to interact with the health directorates-to know the problems they faced and to chart a way forward.

Dr. Nsiah-Asare expressed worry over the delayed projects and said if they were not completed on time and put to use, they would be a complete waste and no return on investment.

He said similar project at Dodowa, in the Greater Accra Region has been completed and that work on Sekondi Hospital in the Western Region was going to be completed soon.

The Director-General noted that since health was one of the high priority areas of the government, there was going to be a 100 per cent enrolment onto the health insurance.

“The GHS is aiming at using Community Health-Based Planning Services (CHPS) as its basic healthcare delivery in a bid to achieve universal health coverage”, he added.

He implored health workers to have positive attitude towards work and avoid anything that could put patients’ life at risk.