Flashback President Akufo-Addo cutting the sod in May 2020 for work to commence while Otumfuo looks on admiringly
Efforts by the Akufo-Addo-led government to complete the Maternity and Children’s Block project, which began in 1976 as part of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) Expansion Project, has come to zero.
The project came to a standstill in 1979 as successive governments failed to resuscitate it.
After a long wait, President Akufo-Addo, considering the KATH project a typically abandoned one, has secured a €155 million loan facility for the reactivation and modernisation of the 800-bed Maternity and Children’s block of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital into a state-of-the art, modern health edifice to ease congestion and give relief to children and women in assessing quality health.
Contractors assessing the project on site
The project was also to serve as a referral centre for 12 of the 16 region as well.
As a result, the President cut the sod for the commencement of work to resume on the 44-year-old abandoned project in May 2020 in Kumasi for work to be completed for the first time within 36 months.
The project is supposed to be funded by the German Bank, Deutsche Bank, and British government from the UK Export Finance.
The six floor project will comprise 10 operating theatres, emergency, diagnostic, medical outpatient units for children and women, 54 consulting rooms, 1,000 waiting seats, fully equipped diagnostic rooms with X-ray, ultrasound, and mammography facilities.
Other features of the facility will include Intensive Care Units, an In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) Unit, Breast Feeding Centre, Paediatric Surgery Unit, Pharmacy, dedicated medical oxygen plant, lecture halls, cafeteria, gift shop and bank, and other specialist facilities.
The facility will also house an intensive care unit, a high dependency unit, isolation rooms, and student lecture halls, with the capacity to provide catering services for staff, patients, and students.
But the President’s historic intervention and vision in providing the largest single investment in the history of KATH since its construction in1954 cannot be realized.
The entire structure has to be demolished to allow for the construction of an entirely new edifice as the almost 44 –year-old existing structure has been found to have failed the structural integrity test conducted by Contracta Construction UK Limited, the construction firm tasked to ensure its completion.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah has confirmed that the decision to pull down the facility is based on the final report by the construction firm, Contracta, after its assessment of the whole structure.
“The construction firm proposed that the building should be demolished and re-constructed entirely after it conducted a structural integrity test on the facility. The proposal was tabled before authorities and a decision to pull down the building was arrived at. This is necessary because it is good to do the right thing since one does not know what could happen in the future should the contractor go-ahead to continue with the project. So it is true that the facility will be pulled down and reconstructed with new designs altogether,” he explained.
The Minister said a stakeholder consultation has begun to sensitize the public especially people who live close to the facility to get them to cooperate with authorities when the demolishing of the project starts after the public sensitization is over.
Official KATH sources have hinted that the Ministry of Health is planning a press briefing within the week regarding the decision to demolish the building to herald a public sensitization exercise to educate the public before the planned demolition of the defective and flawed structure takes place.
