President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reiterated the commitment of his government to completing the Agenda 111 Hospitals Project, whose sod he cut in August 2021.
According to President Akufo-Addo, thus far, eighty-six (86) district hospitals, two (2) regional psychiatric hospitals, and the western regional hospital are ongoing, which are all at various levels of completion.
Speaking at the commissioning of the St. Michael’s Specialist Hospital, on Saturday, 30th September 2023, at Abeka Lapaz, the President stated that “the average completion rate of the eighty-nine (89) ongoing projects is fifty-two percent (52%), with work at some of the sites being seventy to eighty percent complete.”
He told the gathering that the construction of these 89 hospitals is being undertaken by indigenous Ghanaian contractors, who have provided direct and indirect jobs to Ghanaians.
“There is an average number of one hundred and twenty (120) workers on each construction site, and, when completed, an average of five hundred and forty-nine (549) persons will be employed in a district hospital, one thousand, three hundred and forty-three (1,343) in a regional hospital, and nine hundred and forty-seven (947) in each psychiatric hospital,” the President said.
He continued, “This means that sixty-seven thousand, six hundred and thirty-five (67,635) people will be employed in the Agenda 111 hospitals.”
The Agenda 111 initiative is providing 101 standard 100-bed district hospitals with accommodation for doctors and nurses in districts without district hospitals; 6 new regional hospitals for each of the 6 new regions; rehabilitating the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region; building 1 new regional hospital for the Western Region; and 2 psychiatric hospitals for two of the three (3) zones of the country, i.e. Middle and North. The entire package is estimated at a cost of USD$1.765 billion.
“Beyond the building of these new healthcare facilities, my vision is to help make Ghana the Centre of Excellence for Medical Care in West Africa by 2030, leveraging on Ghana’s favourable status in the Region as the most peaceful country in West Africa, a beacon of democracy on the continent, and a land of opportunities,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo reaffirmed his government is commitment to improving access to essential and quality health services through the provision of the necessary health infrastructure, equipment, and logistics, including the deployment of appropriate technology as part of the country’s drive to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Since 2017, the President noted that his government has restored nursing trainee allowances, and recruited the highest number of healthcare workers in the history of the 4th Republic, with fifty-eight thousand and forty-one (58,041) health workers employed to supplement the existing health sector workforce at the height of COVID-19 alone.
“The Ghana Ambulance Service has been equipped with three hundred and seven (307) ambulances, that is 1-Constituency-1-Ambulance, in comparison to the fifty-five (55) ‘semi-functioning’ ambulances that existed during the time of the Mahama government. We have made improvements in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to make access easier, and we are using drones to deliver emergency medical supplies to remote areas,” he added.