Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu Ekufu, has modestly admitted that the ‘gargantuan’ promise his ‘boss’ Nana Akufo Addo made recently saying the NPP will build 88 health facilities in the wake of covid-19 is not achievable.
The President in his 8th covid-19 address to the nation on April 26 mentioned that about eighty eight district health facilities will be put up following the outbreak and spread of the novel COVID-19. He emphasized that the Coronavirus has exposed the massive gap in health infrastructure in the country and therefore, the need for government to attend to it.
“There are 88 districts in our country without hospitals. We have six new regions without regional hospitals. We do not have infectious disease control centres dotted across the country and we don’t have enough testing and isolation centres for diseases like COVID-19. We must do something urgently about this.”
“That is why the 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. It will mean 10 in Ashanti, nine in Volta, nine in Central, eight in Eastern, seven in Greater Accra, seven in Upper East, five in Northern, five in Oti, five in Upper West, five in Bono, four in Western North, four in Western, three in Ahafo, three in Savannah, two in Bono East and two in North-Easter regions” Nana-Addo said in his address.
But Ursula Owusu thinks this won’t materialize considering the timeframe: ” We are in April and very soon we will be entering the month of May which means that we have about seven months to the elections, I don’t think we can build all the 88 hospitals in that period,” she said on Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV.
