The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has commissioned and allowed for distribution to hospitals across the country 10,000 hospital beds.
The procurement of the beds was under the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP).
In total 1,500 pieces of critical care beds with overhead tables, 2,000 pieces of standard hospital beds with bedside lockers, 4,000 pieces of health center beds with bedside lockers, 1,000 pieces of children’s cots, and 1,500 pieces of delivery beds would be distributed.
These beds are adjustable for better positioning of the patient’s head and feet.
It will allow for better movement of patients, as well as periodic changes to the pressure points on the body. This will help improve the patient’s blood circulation while he or she is in bed.
In his address at a brief ceremony yesterday to handover the items to the Ministry of Health, President Akufo-Addo stated that the government’s determination to see an end to the no bed syndrome resulted in the decision to procure these hospital beds and their associated accessories to be distributed to all 275 constituencies across the country. “These items are to augment the existing numbers in the country,” President Akufo-Addo noted.
According to the President, “It is always disconcerting to see patients being treated in wheelchairs, in plastic chairs, and even on the floors because of the unavailability of beds.”
He said: “This ceremony, ladies and gentlemen, reinforces government’s commitment to improving access to essential and quality health services through the provision of the necessary health infrastructure equipment and logistics, including the deployment of appropriate technology as part of our drive to attaining universal health coverage.”
President Akufo-Addo then urged “users and hospital staff to take good care of these beds, which have come as at a significant cost to the taxpayer.
“…as four more years for Nana and the NPP will do more for you, because we are motivated by a vision of ensuring that the basic infrastructure in education, health and social services, is equitably distributed throughout our nation to provide relief and encouragement to all sectors of society. That is how we build a united Ghana.”
The Minister for Defence, Dominic Nitiwul, Minister for Special Development Initiatives, Mavis Hawa Koomson, as well as the Deputy Ministers for Health and Defence, Tina Mensah and Derek Oduro, were present.
Earlier, President Akufo-Addo had taken a facility tour of the ongoing construction of a Covid-19 treatment centre at Pantang.
The Minister for Health, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, in his remarks, said the facility was an abandoned project the erstwhile Kufuor administration was putting up as a learning centre for health workers.
He said when there was the need to construct isolation centres, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) coincidentally approached the ministry that it wanted to sponsor the building of one.
The ministry then chose to let them work on the abandoned project, which, he said, after the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is gone, would become an infectious diseases treatment centre.
According to the Board Chairman of the ECG, Kelly Gadzekpo, funding the project was part of the company’s corporate social responsibility.
President Akufo-Addo, in his remarks, said he was really excited about the project.
“When the pandemic hit us, one very important consequence that I took from it was that we needed to develop as quickly as possible a much more efficient health infrastructure than what we had before the pandemic. That is why government committed itself to the programme of Agenda 111, which was to build in our hundred and one districts that did not have district hospitals, district hospitals in the course of the next year, to build seven new regional hospitals, one each for the six new regions, and one new one for the Western Region, and also with the rehabilitation of the Effiankwanta in Sekondi.”
President Akufo-Addo urged users and staff of the facility to look after them well, and make sure that they were well maintained.
The post 10,000 beds for hospitals appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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