47 Year Old Abandoned Hospital In Kumasi Commissioned, Ready To Be Renovated

Any person who has been to one of Ghana’s popular hospitals, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in the Asante region of Ghana, will vouch for the fact that, there is a tremendous and old structure that was built forty seven years back near the hospital. Clearly, since its erection, there has never been any redesigns on the structure.

However, the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo Addo has today, 15th of May, 2020 slice the sod for work to start on the relinquished 47-year-old maternity ward at the hospital. The near 1000 bed maternity and children’s health block began in 1974, and was built to help manage the overcrowding on the current office.

For quite a while, people have been yelling to every legislature that comes to power to go to the aid of the hospital but all without much of any result. Sadly, lives were being lost regularly because of the congestion at the teaching hospital (KATH), the nation’s second-greatest instructing emergency clinic.

The CEO of the hospital, Dr. Oheneba Owusu-Danso and Head of the hospital’s mother and baby unit, Dr. Gyikua Plange Rhule, thinks this has come at the ideal time.

Clog at the hospital made women in labor join queues and each stand by to give birth, which was exceptionally perilous for them. Doctors and nurses at the baby and infant unit needed to oversee four children in a single bunk or hatchery.

Prior to official commissioning of renovations at the abandoned medical clinic, the President Nana Akufo-Addo had visited the spot to see it for himself. Undoubtedly, he was stunned and wrote in the clinic’s guest’s book.

“I am very distressed at what I have seen here today. It is not to the credit of our nation that an important hospital project, KATH maternity block, should stand for 44 years uncompleted. We have to do something about it, and in intend to do so .”

It is expected that this project would be completed in three years, and about $75 million was needed to finish the task.

The Government of Ghana has secured about two credit agreements – from the Deutsche Bank and the UK Export Finance totaling 155 million Euros to proceed with the project.