Akufo-Addo promises to complete 41-year-old KATH maternity building

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has promised to complete the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital’s (KATH) maternity ward project which was started in 1974.

The project which is expected to cost some $70 million to complete has been abandoned by successive governments and has resulted in the needless deaths of pregnant women and babies at the facility.

The project was started by the Acheampong regime 

Until the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo following a Joy News documentary, ‘Next to Die’ led the cause for a construction of a new mother and baby unit for the facility, as many as four babies died at the old congested facility every day.

On a bad day seven babies would die and pregnant women who were in labour had to queue and wait their turn because there were only two surgical theatres at the old unit.

There were only eight beds at the maternity unit and hospital officials revealed that about 100 women died every year at the country’s second largest referral centre.

The new Mother and Baby Unit constructed with help from the Mrs Akufo-Addo has 20 new incubators, and about 130 delivery beds and 12 mothers can go through delivery at the same time.

The new facility also boasts of an ultra modern feeding room. Mothers have been provided with recliner seats to make breastfeeding comfortable, healthy, in a clean and serene atmosphere.

Related: Save-A-Child, Save-A-Mother raises GH₵10m for KATH

And pregnant women in labour will no longer have to queue in order to deliver.

One of the surgical wards at the new Mother and Baby Unit

This has brought some relief but that will not be for long.

President Akufo-Addo is perhaps aware of that, a reason he is poised to complete the facility to bring more relief and ease pressure at the hospital.

He told the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, whom he paid a courtesy call on during his four-day working visit to the Ashanti Region, that he will complete the project to make a mark for himself.

The President said he is in search of funds for the 1000-bed project and asked the Asantehene to prepare as he may need his help in that venture.

He also promised to give the Ashanti region its fair share of development and debunked suggestions that he had ignored the region.