LACK OF SPACE STALLS THREE MAJOR PROJECTS AT KATH
By Sebastian R. Freiku
The Chief Executive Officer of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Dr. Oheneba Owusu-Danso, has emphasised the urgent need to quickly resolve the impasse between the health facility and the military involving the land dotted around it in order to facilitate further development of the hospital.
He said KATH is the only public teaching hospital in the country with very limited land space which makes expansion efforts difficult in spite of management’s commitment to make KATH befits its status as a major referral centre for the entire middle and northern sectors of the country.
Speaking to journalists during an inspection tour of three major ongoing projects at the hospital last Friday, Dr. Owusu-Danso lamented that every available space at KATH has become a car park because of lack of space, and that doctors have to be accommodated at the expense of demolishing an old bungalow.
The CEO said the doctors and the skills are already available but there are no adequate facilities for them to fully operate because the hospital does not have space to expand its facilities but hoped that the land issues between KATH and the Armed Forces would be resolved this year.
The projects, one of which is an IGF funded Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) center at the cost of GH¢450,000.00 is expected to be completed by June this year.
The ART which services are quite expensive, will be the first of its kind in a public health facility in the country and for which KATH Management have decided to utilize the top floor of the old Family Planning and Reproductive Health block for this expansion project because of lack of land.
The other two projects are a 190-bed Patient’s Relatives Hostel facility which is almost completed at the cost of GH¢5.1 million under a BOT arrangement which takes up to 24 years and the Dialysis Centre Expansion Project at a contract sum of GH¢300,000.00.
Dr. Owusu-Danso explained that the Patient’s Relatives Hostel Project will reduce the burden of relatives whose patients are admitted in the hospital from sleeping in unauthorized and open spaces within the hospital premises.
The Dialysis Centre Expansion Project, the CEO disclosed, will ultimately help to establish a 30-dialyais machine capacity for the hospital. END.
