Abandon 111 hospitals project, focus on Neuroscience centre - Korle Bu doctor to govt

A renowned Neurosurgeon at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has appealed to the Akufo-Addo led government to abandon the plan to construct some 100 new hospitals and focus on investing the money in the establishment of a neuroscience centre.

Speaking on the Morning Starr on Wednesday, Dr Hadi Abdallah told host Francis Abban that building a neuroscience centre which the country lacks will help save hundreds of lives being lost on a daily basis at Korle Bu.

He added that building new regional and district hospitals without first constructing a major neuroscience centre will put more pressure on the already choked Korle Bu.

“I am calling on the government of Ghana to postpone the construction of the 111 health care centres or the district hospitals, at least forgo 10 of them and use that to build the neuroscience centre. Because if you build the neuroscience centre it is going to free up the spaces at the accident centre and the emergencies.

“If you go and build these district hospitals they will still be referring cases to Korle bu, Neuroscience doesn’t have space. So I am hoping that this is what we would do.”

Dr Abdallah also slammed governments both current and previous for abandoning Ghana’s biggest referral hospital describing it as criminal.

According to him, it is unheard of that a Hospital of Korle Bu’s stature has only four ICU beds and a deliberate attempt has not been made over the years to expand the number of beds and monitors at the ICU.

His comments come after the mother of the late Michael Kofi Asamoah whose brain condition went viral on social media, Cordelia Ama Selormey, shared her experience at the Korle Bu Hospital over how she lost her son due to the lack of basic equipment like the defibrillator.

“We are operating with only one theatre and we have only one space in the intensive care unit. Our ICU is supposed to have twelve beds but currently, we have just four and one out of it is for neurosurgery. And even with that one, it’s subject to availability.”

Dr Abdallah, however, maintained that “this is not a direct attack on Korle-Bu board but it’s how the system has been run over the years.”