Agenda 111 logo
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will today cut sod for the commencement of the construction of his promised 111 hospital projects at Trede, in the Ashanti Region. Contractors in other districts are also expected to commence works afterwards. The ‘Agenda 111’ is programmed to take 12 months to complete, from commencement of each unit, with a funding of $100 million from government, through the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF).
The project, as we are told, is part of a grand vision for Ghana’s healthcare sector by the Akufo-Addo administration. The realization of the project will ensure that 101 outstanding districts will be provided with hospitals, in addition to 10 selected regional and specialized hospitals.
The project is budgeted at nearly $17 million for each of the district and specialized hospitals, with funding for the construction of six new regional hospitals sought under an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) arrangement.
Investment in health
Ghana’s health sector has been bedevilled with challenges, ranging from infrastructure, personnel agitations over remuneration, inadequate beds, to mention but a few. The Akufo-Addo government, since it took office in 2017, has however been consistent in dealing with the challenges one after the other. The government in 2017 restored the trainee-nurses’ allowances that was cancelled by the John Dramani Mahama administration. In April 2019, it commenced medical drone delivery service to CHPS compounds, health centres and hospitals across the country.
In January 2020, 307 ambulances were procured by the government to boost the emergency healthcare service in the country. In September 2020, President Akufo-Addo handed over 10,000 hospital beds of various specifications for specific needs to the Ministry of Health (MoH) for onward distribution to hospitals across the country.
Thus, the government has consistently been dealing with the challenges he inherited in the health sector one at a time. The government’s delivery tracker launched by Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia shows wide-spread building of Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) centres dotted across the length and breadth of the country.
These are aside of other major successes chalked in the health sector such as the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, banishing of cholera from the four corners of the country, among others.
Call for Support
That is why we agree with the Minister of Information when he asks Ghanaians to support the government in delivering these 111 hospital projects. The Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in calling on Ghanaians to rally behind the agenda, specifically requested the local beneficiary communities, traditional leaders, youth and all actors in the local health sector to give their full support as government rolls out the project.
That the project is finally seeing light of day, after it was promised by President Akufo-Addo almost a year ago, is a refreshing news. That the government has shown fidelity in dealing with the challenges in the health sector is not in doubt. The many successes chalked by the government should convince us that, given the needed support from the people, this will also be another major achievement in our country.
No colourisation
Diseases and sicknesses do not know the colour of their victims. They do not care about one’s ethnicity, political party, religious affiliation, gender or race before attacking him/her. It is therefore important that as a country we eschew all divisive tendencies and pessimism, and offer our full support for the success of the agenda.
History will remember us one day that when a vision was mooted to provide for the country one of the biggest infrastructural developments in the health sector, all of us who were living at the time supported it. This is not beyond us as a country, and we can definitely do it.
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