Afuko-Addo’s Promises 90 New Hospitals Across Ghana

The Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has promised to build more than 90 new hospitals in the country, as coronavirus continues to highlight the nation’s stark medical inequalities. However many are dubious as to whether he will actually be able to deliver on the pledge.

He made the announcement during a televised address on Sunday, stating that there were new medical facilities planned for 88 districts where there is currently no hospital, as well as 6 additional regional hospitals.

"Each of them will be a quality, standard design 100-bed hospital with accommodation for doctors, nurses, and other health workers," President Akufo-Addo said.

Ghana needs the new medical centers as it doesn't have enough testing and isolation centers to treat COVID-19 patients, Akufo-Addo said, adding that the investment was "the largest" in Ghana's history.

There are three main concerns, the unrealistic/impracticality of building so many hospitals at such speed, the money required and the doctors required – neither of which Ghana currently has.

Policy analyst Ziblim Alhassan called the President's pledge "unrealistic".

"One month after the [COVID-19] pandemic has hit this country, setting up a single testing center in addition to the two we have in the country is a major problem," said Ziblim, an analyst at the Center for Development and Policy Advocacy based in Tamale, the capital of Ghana's Northern Region.

"If the government could put up 88 hospitals across the country, why is it so difficult for the same government to put up a testing center at least in the Northern Region to serve the rest of [the north]?" he said.

According to Ziblim, coronavirus samples collected in all of Ghana's north need to be taken to a testing center in Kumasi, which is seven hours drive from Tamale and even further from other northern districts. The results take five to seven days to come back.

University of Ghana economist Godfred Alufar Bokpin also expressed doubt about the government's ability to pay for the hospitals.

"it is going to be very, very difficult," Bokpin told DW over the phone from Accra.

"We all acknowledge that having these hospitals across the country is the way to go, but the timing and the ability to deliver within this period is particularly challenging," he said. "Because if you look at the impact of COVID-19 on our revenue, deficits have gone up drastically."

Even if Ghana manages to build more hospitals, the Ghanaian Medical Association said it would be hard to find enough doctors to work in the hospitals.

"Whilst we can build a structure in 12 months or even a week as we saw in China in Wuhan, you cannot do the same with the human resource," Deputy Secretary of the association, Titus Beyuo, was quoted by the online news site, Ghanaweb as saying.

"It takes us on the average three to four years to produce a specialist whose regular medical education is six to seven years," he said.

Ghana has one of the highest rates in the world of doctors leaving the country to work elsewhere.

It also has difficulty convincing physicians to work in rural areas. It's estimated that more than two-thirds of the country's doctors practice in either Accra or Kumasi, Ghana's second-biggest city.

This leads to massive inequalities in health care: the Greater Accra region, which includes the capital, has one doctor per 3,000 people, whereas the Upper East region, one of Ghana's poorest, has one doctor to 26,000 people.