A research fellow at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Kwame Sarpong Asiedu has accused outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo of merely commissioning buildings and calling them hospitals.

According to Asiedu, these structures cannot be considered proper hospitals if they lack essential medical resources such as beds and healthcare professionals.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Thursday, December 19, he explained that a hospital does not function properly if it has no medical beds available and lacks health professionals to care for patients.

He pointed out that the country’s current hospital capacity is insufficient when compared to the number of doctors available, particularly in the five teaching hospitals and regional hospitals.

“Let’s say if we have 7,000 doctors in Ghana and that includes doctors who have left the country, if we say that the 5 teaching hospitals have a minimum of 200 doctors each because we have people training and all that, that is 21,000 to 31,000 offers for 5 hospitals,” Mr  Asiedu said.

He further stated that while the country has enough nurses based on the population ratio, the major problem is the inability to employ them due to financial constraints.

 Mr Asiedu also highlighted that, ahead of the 2024 elections, the government had announced that the portal was open for the 2020 nursing graduates to apply for jobs.

 He pointed out that many nurses who graduated between 2020 and 2023 are still unemployed, and the 2024 batch is set to join them.

“The government put information in different reports and documents knowing that few of us will read the documents and try and say if you cross-reference this information, it does not add up because what is in this document is different from what is in the other documents, meanwhile they are all official government documents,” he said.

However, Mr Asiedu said that despite the country training nurses, they remain unemployed due to a lack of funding.

He also commented on the government’s plans to build new hospitals, saying, “We are building 110 hospitals which we need 7.5 billion which we don’t have.

At the campaign, we had a president who sees all these documents, he commissioned all these things, he said, ‘Working around 3 buildings and cutting tapes and calling them hospitals, let’s stop the jokes in the country,” he ended.