President Akufo-Addo has given the rationale behind the agenda 111 projects by his administration which is targeting at providing 101 district hospitals.
The project which commences last month will also see the provision of two specialized hospitals for the middle and northern belts, the redevelopment of the Accra psychiatric hospital plus the development of six new regional hospitals, and one extra-regional hospital for the Western region.
The project is budgeted at nearly $17m for each of the district hospitals.
After the sod-cutting ceremony in Kumasi, it has received a lot of backlash particularly from the biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
President Akufo-Addo explaining why the agenda 111 hospital project came in line during his visit to Takoradi in a radio interview disclosed that it is as a result of the outbreak of Covid-19 as he feared about the country’s population.
According to him, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the people and for that, initiating the agenda 111 projects in the bid to create room for basic healthcare for Ghanaians.
President Akufo- Addo explained further that “To be honest, I mean let me go to the Genesis of it, at the time Covid-19 rate was high I was there and it looks like it was sweeping the country and if you will remember Melina Gates said Africa will be falling in droves in the streets dead from the diseases”.
He confessed that “Then Bawumia told me there were 88 districts at that time in Ghana without district hospitals, subsequently, we discovered that in fact, the figure was 101. So if you will remember, the original concept was agenda 88”.
The President expressed worried that “But truth be told, I feared because a lot of our people are defenseless without hospitals I got really scared and felt sad. So in this case it is the responsibility of the government to find a way out to protect the population and protect the people”.
He continued that “so that is the instincts that brought about agenda 88 which subsequently became agenda 111 because then, we added on to it the regional hospitals for the six more regions plus the ones for the Western region”
“Also, Psychiatric hospitals in Ghana are concentrating just in Accra, however, there was the need to disperse them around the country but the initial feel was that if we don’t do something like this, God willing we can survive this pandemic but if there is another problem and such arrangement is not done, we are going to expose our population to a lot of suffering” he stated.
He noted that “As a political leader, you need to have some sense of responsibility for your people and some sense of compassion for them and then see how best you can mobilize the resources of your country to protect the population and that is the instincts”.
He added that “People can call it names and they can give whatever words they want but for me, it is necessary. We want a situation that wherever you are in Ghana and there is a problem you can have access to basic healthcare”.
President Akufo-Addo stated that “we are doing this to have a functioning district hospitals in the 260 districts in Ghana shortly and this will help our population better protected and that is for me the most important aspect of this situation, how best we can protect our population.”
He pointed out that “It’s not propaganda but as far as I am concern, the necessary part of being the President of the country is to take the measures that in your view will help protect the people from disaster, tragedy and that is what motivated agenda 111 and we are going to do it and we are going to succeed”.
He added that “I know everything I want to do is met by a lot of saboteurs, they said that I was deceiving the people when I said that I was going to make SHS for free across the country, we did it and its four years now and it has become part of the fabric of the country and in the same way, within two years, people will see that I was not deceiving the people, I wasn’t trying to play politics with the perception but we were determined to do it and that is necessary”.
Background
The District Hospitals Project was first announced in April 2020 by President Akufo-Addo during his 8th Covid update to the nation and is programmed to take 12 months to complete from the commencement of each unit to completion.
Since its announcement the Project Implementation Committee chaired by Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei Opare has worked on securing 88 of 101 sites of about 15 acres each, procuring the services of consultants both for the entire project and the specific sites as well as securing funding for the project.
Commencement Funding of $100m has been made available through the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) for the execution of the project.
District and Specialized hospitals are being funded by the Government of Ghana, EPC arrangements have been made for the construction of the Regional hospitals.
Contractors for the various projects have also been procured and are commencing work, with the first set starting from the coming week.
The project is expected to deepen healthcare delivery at all district levels and ensure that Ghanaians can access high-quality healthcare at all district levels. It will also provide thousands of jobs for the healthcare staff to be recruited and posted to all these 111 facilities as well as their ancillary workers in these communities.
The housing and local services associated with these projects are also expected to add a new layer to local economic activities in service of the local communities.
BY Daniel Bampoe