The Deputy Health Minister Dr Bernard Okoe-Boye has defended the underutilisation of the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) which was constructed by the erstwhile Mahama administration.

“If you need to go through four stages to get UGMC fully operational, we have put it on stage one. No government within a year or two can get a hospital that requires a thousand workers, all that staff within a year.

"You graduate it. But the talk goes as if nothing has happened to the hospital" he told journalists after a press conference in the Upper West Region.  

This follows massive backlash from the public on why the Akufo-Addo government will promise to construct 94 new hospitals when well equipped facilities including UGMC and the Bank Hospital put up by Bank of Ghana continue to be idle.

President Akufo-Addo in his recent address to the nation announced plans to construct 88 hospitals in all districts lacking a health facility and six regional hospitals in the newly created regions.

The announcement did not sit well with some Ghanaians who argued that government can concentrate on completing health facilities under construction or open up completed ones for public use.

The Minority in Parliament have already described the move as a campaign promise that will not see the light of day.

They argue that government has overstretched its budget for 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and is unlikely to generate fund for such an ambitious project.

They have also added their voice to calls on the Health Ministry and the President to focus on the rehabilitation of various CHPS compounds scattered across the country and fast track the use of UGMC and the Bank Hospital.

But arguing in favour of government, Dr Okoe-Boye said the 650-bed facility, first of its kind in West Africa and estimated to cost some $217 million was not in use because although it has been inaugurated, more measures need to be put in place.

According to the Deputy Minister, the hospital is in need of a functional staff and other equipment that government is handling.

“To run a functional hospital you need to have staff, drugs and most importantly you need to have a budget. All these components must be in place to have a functional hospital and so forgive me but a hospital is not like a three bedroom house that once it is built, you can go in, lay a mat and it is functional.

"So at the time, this hospital was commissioned, the next day it couldn’t take patients. After coming into power this government didn’t go and sleep on the matter. This hospital needs over a thousand workers to be fully operational.

"Korle Bu runs with over 6000 staff, this one needs a minimum 1200 and since we came into office we have given clearance to more than 200 people.

"Beyond the staff that has been recruited, budget has also been allocated so that they will have money to buy drugs and pay their clients who supply them with electricity and other things," he said.