Coronavirus doesn't warrant new hospitals – NDC’s Kwaku Boahen chides Akufo-Addo

A Deputy Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kwaku Boahen, says the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic does not warrant building of new hospitals.

He said the situation at hand only needs stringent measures to halt further spread of the virus and not beginning to build new hospitals.

Kwaku Boahen expressed these while contributing to a discussion on Onua TV’s Maakye on Tuesday, May 12.

He explained that the health chapter of 2016 manifesto of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) indicated that all district hospitals will be renovated but this has not been done since the party regained power.

Kwaku Boahen told host Bright Kwasi Asempa that Covid-19 does not need hospital.

“It needs good measures to prevent spread. You are now going to construct hospitals and by the time you complete the hospital construction, the virus would have gone,” he said in Twi.

He alleged that the NPP has promised to build new hospitals as a cover-up to squander the rapid credit facility accessed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Presidential Staffer Charles Bissiw, who was also on the show, said a “global thing needs to be tackled well. It is a pandemic and not epidemic”.

“If we had not brought in the ambulances, it would have been worse,” he noted, adding that some countries cannot tell how many people have the virus because they are lagging behind in contact tracing.

“But we are doing it and all these are measures are to curb the spread.”