Eighty-six (86) district hospitals, two (2) regional psychiatric hospitals, and the western regional hospital are now under construction and are at varying stages of completion, according to President Akufo-Addo.
During the St. Michael's Specialist Hospital commissioning ceremony on Saturday, September 30, 2023, in Abeka Lapaz, the President declared that "the eighty-nine (89) ongoing projects have an average completion rate of fifty-two percent (52%), with work at some of the sites being seventy to eighty percent complete."
He informed the assembly that local Ghanaian contractors are building these 89 hospitals, giving Ghanaians both direct and indirect employment opportunities.
"At completion, an average of 549 persons will be employed in a district hospital, 1,343 in a regional hospital, and 947 in each psychiatric hospital," the President stated.
"There are currently 120 workers on each construction site.""That means that the Agenda 111 hospitals will employ sixty-seven thousand, six hundred and thirty-five (67,635) people," he went on.
Under the Agenda 111 initiative, 101 standard 100-bed district hospitals with accommodations for physicians and nurses will be built in districts without district hospitals; six new regional hospitals will be constructed for each of the six new regions;
the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region will be renovated; one new regional hospital will be constructed for the Western Region; and two psychiatric hospitals will be constructed for each of the Middle and North zones of the nation.
The anticipated total cost of the package is USD$1.765 billion.
"My goal is to utilise Ghana's favourable position in the region as the most peaceful nation in West Africa, a beacon of democracy on the continent, and a land of opportunities to help make Ghana the Centre of Excellence for Medical Care in West Africa by 2030, going beyond the construction of these new healthcare facilities," he stated.
In order to help the nation achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), President Akufo-Addo reiterated his administration's commitment to enhancing access to basic and high-quality healthcare services by providing the required infrastructure, tools, and logistics.
This includes deploying the right technology.The President stated that since 2017, his administration has reinstated nursing trainee allowances and hired the greatest number of healthcare professionals in the 4th Republic's history—58,041, to be exact—to augment the workforce in the health sector during the peak of COVID-19.
Three hundred and seven (307) ambulances, or 1-Constituency-1-Ambulance, are available to the Ghana Ambulance Service, as opposed to the fifty-five (55) "semi-functioning" ambulances that were in use during the Mahama administration.
Drones are being used to transport emergency medical supplies to remote places, and we have improved the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to make access easier," he continued.
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