Health Minister-designate: Akufo-Addo remains committed to ‘Agenda 88’

The Minister of Health-designate, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has stated that the New Patriotic Party government is still committed to building the 88 district hospitals promised by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

In addition, he noted that the President is also committed to ensuring that all six newly created regions get a regional hospital each among other planned hospital projects such as the expansion of the Efia-Kwesimintim hospital.

Speaking during his vetting yesterday, the Minister-designate assured Parliament’s Appointment Committee that preparations are far advanced to actualise the President’s vision.

“That was the President’s vision, which was supposed to have been translated into action. He set up a committee at the presidency, led by the Chief of Staff. I was a member. We pulled one or two infrastructure from our ministry. There was a representation from the Ghana Health Service too,” he said.

Acquisition of lands

He noted that what has delayed the process has to do with acquisition of land, adding that the Ministry is still waiting for some 13 districts to make available land space for the projects.

“What they asked us to do immediately was to write to all the district directors for health services to allocate land and give us the site plans of where they want these district hospitals to be sited. As I speak, we still have close to about 13 districts that have not completed this exercise,” Mr Agyeman-Manu said

Agenda 88

President Akufo-Addo last year announced that plans had been put in place for the construction of hospitals in some 88 districts across the country to augment government’s efforts improve they health care delivery system in the country.

“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 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,” the President had said.

Mr Agyeman-Manu thus gave the assurance that the construction of the hospitals would begin this year.

Covid-19 vaccine

On Covid-19 vaccines, the Minister-designate said Ghana’s vaccine rollout would rely on already existing infrastructure put in place by the Ghana Health Service.

“When we started developing the vaccine strategy, we thought it wise not to reinvent the wheel but continue to rely on what is good for us.

“If you look at the strategy, when it is fully confirmed, you will see we are using Ghana Health Service infrastructure,” he said.

He gave the assurance that the country is limiting its procurement of the vaccine to the types it can effectively preserve.

“… We have cold chain equipment that can take some types of vaccines we are looking for. The first vaccines that we may get will be AstraZeneca. That can be stored in our current cold chain infrastructure,” he said.

He reiterated the President’s earlier position that the first procured vaccine would be in the country by March.

Covid management

Meanwhile, the Health Minister-designate has debunked public perception that the country’s Covid-19 case count is being ‘massaged’. He said the figures being churned out by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) are the accurate figures.

“If I don’t believe in the numbers, who else will? These numbers are coming from our outfit, an agent that is dedicated to its work. How then can I sit here as a Minister and say I don’t believe in the numbers? Please, I do and I do and I do,” Mr Agyeman-Manu said.

“We have battled Covid for nearly 11 months. The strategies we have used have worked for us in Ghana. If you look at our deaths or even our infection rate at the point where we slowed down transmission to this level, we must be thankful and grateful to God and our President for leading the battle.

“We are not going to change so much. The only new things we are going to do are the new things that have come up on the globe like the vaccination. But apart from that, we are beefing up our risk communication again and we have started to ensure that Ghanaians adhere strictly to the Covid protocols. That is the only solution,” the Minister-designate, who was grilled by the Appointment Committee for close to five hours, added.