Prioritize medical tents over 88 hospitals, Kwesi Pratt to govt

After the President, Nana Akufo-Addo’s eighth address to the nation yesterday, a debate has erupted across the country on the feasibility of the said 88 district hospitals he promised Ghanaians in a year’s time to fight COVID-19 and other possible future pandemics.

Some have argued that it is impossible for the feat to be achieved as the President had about 9 months to end his first term of office. Whilst others questioned the source of funding for such a project.

But refusing to tow the same lines is Ghanaian Journalist and Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr.

In an interview on Happy98.9FM’s Happy Morning Show with Samuel Eshun, he challenged government to rather “provide medical tents to fight the COVID-19 rather than focus on building 88 hospitals”.

He motioned that, a lot of lives would have already been lost by the time these hospitals will be completed, thus, the government should replicate the medical tent facilities being done in other countries.

He queried, “are we now going to build 88 hospitals with the virus already here?”

The journalist reiterated, “we need to build tents to care for the sick and not hospitals”. Noting that it will take a while to get these hospitals in place.

The President yesterday said, “There are eighty-eight (88) districts in our country without district hospitals; we have six (6) new regions without regional hospitals; we do not have five infectious disease control centres dotted across the country; and we do not have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVD-19. We must do something urgently about this. That is why 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”, he said.

The standard 100 -bed facilities which will be in districts without hospitals will also have accommodation for staff.