Government working hard to continue Tema General Hospital project - Okoe Boye 

Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, the President's Representative at the Ministry of Health, says the government is doing its best to ensure the completion of the 400-bed facility project at the Tema General Hospital and other facilities.

Dr Okoe Boye, who is also the Minister of Health Designate, said the debt exchange programme affected the project and others, adding that the Ministry of Finance was working hard to complete the exchange programme to ensure that creditors could start disbursement for such projects to either commence or be reactivated.

The Tema General Project, which forms part of four facilities under a 140 million Euro fund, has stalled at 20 per cent completion.

He said under the project, the Tema General Hospital was allocated 92.7 million euros for the construction of the regional hospital, while the Central Medical Stores, which was razed by fire in January 2015, will also be reconstructed with 15.6 million euros, while the Nkoranza District Hospital and the Accident and Emergency Department at the Dormaa Hospital, respectively, would also receive 23.8 million euros and 7.5 million euros.

He said the Ministry and the Ghana Health Service were not only interested in brick and mortar to improve health care.

The Minister Designate, who is also the former Deputy Minister of Health, added: “We are also interested in systems, and that's why the government has invested a lot of systems into these modernizations in terms of records and data in the hospitals.

Hospitals are speaking to each other just as it happens elsewhere, so we are doing both the soft and hard infrastructure; it's a process.”

Mr Abraham Fiscion, the Principal Consultant, CSENG Consult, briefing the Minister-Designate and his entourage, noted that three out of the four projects were started, adding that they had attained several levels of completion.

He disclosed that in October 2023, because of Ghana's financial crises, the main contractor withdrew from the site, citing risks of payment.

He stated that at the Tema General Hospital, the structural works on the psychiatry and infectious disease buildings had been completed, adding that the other buildings have come out of the foundation and are at various levels of reinforced concrete work.

The consultant further revealed that at Dormaa, the steel structures had been done and they were yet to roof and clad the building, adding that the foundation of the Central Medical Stores had been done while the pre-engineering building was completed but yet to be shipped to Ghana and erected.

Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, said the essence of the various health projects was to improve access to care, noting that access is physical, geographical, cultural, and financial.

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said Ghana was doing well in financial accessibility through the national health insurance scheme, and culturally, the authorities were working to ensure that people feel comfortable and safe in the hospitals.

He said there was a need to expand access to make sure that patients did not spend too much time at the hospital before getting care.

He said that to achieve this, they were working at the primary level to ensure that they pulled resources together so that people could access care anywhere they were and at any time.

GNA