Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said hospitals and clinics left behind by the John Mahama administration are being continued by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
Critics have urged the government to complete old health projects instead of constructing 88 new ones as announced by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
“The unfinished hospitals largely remain work in progress and we will give an update on where we picked them from and how far we have come with them”, Oppong Nkrumah.
He explained that “There are some that we have finished and opened up, some are near completion and some have gotten into financial and contractual difficulties because of some issues associated with them”.
“We will also give dates on when those in progress will be finished. It is to make the point that, some may be uncompleted still but they are not abandoned, it is work in progress, it will be finished by a particular time”.
“Some of these projects were even started during former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s time and it wasn’t completed in the 8 years not because the government was wicked and sort to abandon them but the module financing around them is the problem,” the Minister said.
President Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday, April 26, 2020, during his national address to update the nation on the Covid-19 pandemic, said the disease has not only disrupted people’s lives, but it had also exposed deficiencies in the country’s healthcare system, because of years of under-investment.
To help improve upon the existing situation, the President announced that the government had decided to undertake a major investment in the healthcare infrastructure, which will be the largest in the country’s history.
This, he said will involve the construction of 88 hospitals in the districts without hospitals.