COVID-19: Government to begin construction of 88 district hospitals this year

President Nana Akufo-Addo has announced the construction of hospitals in some 88 districts across the country.

The President disclosed this in his eighth address to the nation on Sunday.

“There are 88) districts in our country without district hospitals; we have six (6) 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 must do something urgently about this. That is why Government has decided to undertake a major investment in our healthcare infrastructure, the largest in our history. We will, this year, begin constructing 88 hospitals in the districts without hospitals,” he said.

The standard 100 -bed facilities which will be in districts without hospitals will also have accommodation for staff.

President Akufo-Addo also reiterated the government’s plans of building regional hospitals in the six new regions to boost healthcare delivery in the country.

“Each of them will be a quality, standard-design, one hundred bed hospital, with accommodation for doctors, nurses and other health workers, and the intention is to complete them within a year. We have also put in place plans for the construction of six new regional hospitals in the six new regions, and the rehabilitation of the Effia Nkwanta Hospital, in Sekondi, which is the regional hospital of the Western Region.”

Infectious disease control centers

Additionally, President Akufo-Addo gave an indication that work will soon commence on three infectious disease control centers for each of the zones of the country to improve Ghana’s testing capacities with regards to contagious illnesses.

“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 centers for each of the zones of our country, i.e. Coastal, Middle Belt and Northern, with the overall objective of setting up a Ghana Centre for Disease Control. The recent, tragic CSM outbreak, with over 40 deaths, has reaffirmed the need for ready access to such infectious disease control centres, even though, in our time, nobody should die of the disease.”

Regional breakdown of district hospitals

Ashanti (10)

Volta (9)

Eastern (8)

Greater Accra (7)

Upper East (7)

Oti (5)

Upper West (5)

Bono (5)

Western North (5)

Savanna (3)

Bono East (2)

North East (2)

Ghana’s COVID-19 cases have increased to 1,550 as of Sunday, April 26, 2020.

The updated case count comes after 271 more persons tested positive for the virus.

Per the update, one more person has died while 21 additional recoveries have been confirmed bringing the total number of deaths and recoveries to 11 and 155 respectively.

Some of the new cases were confirmed in the Oti, Greater Accra, Ashanti and the Central regions.

Out of the 271 new cases reported, about 75 of them were detected through routine surveillance while 196 were found positive through the enhanced contact tracing exercise.