The board chairman of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Prof. Titus Beyuo, says more than 7,000 staff at Korle Bu alone must undergo training before a new national patient management system can be rolled out, one of several reasons the long-awaited reforms have yet to take effect.

Prof. Beyuo, who is also an MP, revealed the figures this week on the Joy Super Morning Show, as he responded to fresh public outcry over chronic overcrowding at Ghana’s biggest referral hospital.

He said the massive training requirement shows why the system cannot be activated immediately despite years of complaints.

“Korle Bu alone has over 7,000 staff. We have to train them in Korle Bu, do the same in Komfo Anokye, Cape Coast and all these other hospitals,” he said.

The disclosure highlights the scale of the work still ahead.

Training health workers across multiple major hospitals could involve tens of thousands of personnel nationwide, all of whom will need to be brought on board before the new platform becomes fully functional.

Prof. Beyuo did not specify whether funding has been allocated for the training, who will conduct it, or how long the nationwide exercise will take. Those operational details remain unclear.

The training requirement comes on top of a long list of prerequisites for the system: connecting over 200 ambulances to a central network, establishing a national command centre, relocating the ambulance service’s call hub, and deploying medical staff to manage patient sorting around the clock.

These challenges, he said, partly explain why the overcrowding situation, which drew a sharp statement from the Korle Bu Doctors Association this week, has persisted for so long, even though successive governments have pledged to fix it.

Prof. Beyuo stressed that the current government has shown stronger political will than previous administrations, but warned Ghanaians not to expect overnight results.

“If I tell you that in two days or three days, it will be fully functional — no,” he emphasised.

In the interim, he said hospitals across the country are being encouraged to implement internal measures to manage surges until the national system is ready in phases.