COVID-19: Ghana unveils plan to build 90 hospitals within one year

Ghana has announced plans to build about 90 hospitals within one year in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, who broke the news in a TV broadcast on Sunday, said one hospital will be built in each of 88 districts while another six will be built in various regions.

He added that the country also plans on building infectious disease centres, and that all the health facilities will be built in coastal, middle belt and northern Ghana.

Akufo-Addo said the country needs to “do something urgently” about the loopholes in its health system, and that each of the district hospitals “will be a quality, standard-design, one hundred bed hospital, with accommodation”

He was quoted as saying: “There are 88 districts in our country without district hospitals, we have six new regions without regional hospitals, we do not have five infectious disease control centres dotted across the country, and we do not have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVD-19.

“We are going to beef up our existing laboratories, and establish new ones across every region for testing.

“We will establish three infectious disease control centres for each of the zones of our country, with the overall objective of setting up a Ghana Centre for Disease Control.”

He said while his government acknowledges the investments will not be easy, “it is self-evidently necessary to serve the needs of 21st century Ghana.”