Construction of Ghana’s first infectious-diseases centre for the isolation and treatment of critically ill COVID-19 patients has been completed.

According to the Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund, the 100-bed facility in the Ga East municipality, Accra, features a 20-bed ICU, a laboratory and a morgue, as well as a back-up generator system, among other amenities. Work on the centre started in April, and the building was handed over to the Ministry of Health this month.

The Health Ministry also plans to set up three infectious-diseases control centres in Ghana’s Coastal, Middle Belt and Northern zones. They form part of an ambitious plan to build health facilities across the country, where more than 100 districts reportedly have no hospitals. ‘Government is doing something about it, and, that is why, shortly, the construction of the 101 hospitals in the districts without hospitals will start,’ President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo announced recently. Each hospital will have 100 patient beds and will provide accommodation for staff.

The plan encompasses building regional hospitals for each of Ghana’s six new regions, and includes the rehabilitation of the Effia Nkwanta Hospital in Sekondi, in the Western Region, as well as the construction of a new hospital for that region. Meanwhile, work on the first phase of the new 600-bed Eastern Regional Hospital has started at a cost of EUR70 million, with financial support from Standard Chartered UK.

28 July 2020
Image: Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund