President John Dramani Mahama has announced the establishment of the Ghana Medical Equipment Services Limited, a subsidiary of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, to oversee the management, maintenance, and efficient use of medical equipment in major hospitals across the country.

The President said the move is aimed at addressing long-standing challenges with the maintenance of medical equipment in Ghana’s health facilities and ensuring that major investments in healthcare infrastructure do not deteriorate due to poor servicing and management.

Speaking at the commissioning of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory at the National Cardiothoracic Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, President Mahama said the decision was informed by lessons from previous investments in medical equipment.

He recalled that during his tenure as Vice President under the late President John Evans Atta Mills, the government invested about US$250 million to equip major regional and teaching hospitals with modern medical equipment.

“When I was Vice President to Professor Mills, we spent about $250 million to retool all the major regional and teaching hospitals in this country, provided CT scans, MRIs, X-rays and all the major equipment that was needed,” President Mahama said.

However, he said the lack of proper maintenance systems meant many of those machines broke down earlier than expected, forcing hospitals to depend on the government for further replacements.

“A few years after that, we found out that most of that equipment was not properly maintained and had broken down, and the hospitals were calling on governments again to do another retooling or replace their equipment,” he said.

“It is not a sustainable model. And so we’ve established a different model for this retooling that we’re doing.”

President Mahama explained that the newly established Ghana Medical Equipment Services Limited will provide a dedicated structure for the management and maintenance of medical equipment across the country.

He said the company will be staffed by specialised biomedical engineers who will be responsible for ensuring that equipment is properly operated, serviced, and maintained.

“And so Cabinet has approved the Ghana Medical Equipment Services Limited, which will be a subsidiary of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund,” he said.

“These will be specialised biomedical engineers who will oversee and supervise the use and maintenance of the equipment.”

According to the President, the company will also serve as the mechanism for replacing equipment that has become obsolete or cannot be repaired.

“And it will be the vehicle; if the equipment is obsolete or is broken down beyond repair and has to be replaced, it’s the Ghana Medical Equipment Services Limited that will be responsible and be the vehicle for replacing the equipment,” he said.

President Mahama said the new arrangement is expected to create a more sustainable system for managing medical infrastructure and prevent public funds invested in healthcare from being wasted.

“We believe that this will be a more sustainable level so that the investment the Ghanaian people are putting in will not just go to waste as it has done in the past,” he said.