Mrs Akosua Frema Osei Opare, the Chief of Staff, has charged boards and management of public health institutions to provide innovative leadership that would help attract private investments to enhance health care delivery in the country.
They should do away with inertia and think outside the box to ensure the judicious and prudent use of internal resources for the expansion and improvement of facilities, without relying solely on the central government.
Mrs Osei Opare made the call at the inauguration of an ultra-modern oxygen plant for the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi.
The GH¢5,953,000.00 plant is a private pre-finance arrangement between KATH and Rikair Company Limited and it would be repaid in equal monthly installments by KATH, through its internally generated resources, over a period of three years.
The two plants have a combined production capacity of 2,496 cubic meters of oxygen a day as against the hospital’s current total oxygen consumption of 1,875 cubic meters per day.
Thus, it has an excess production capacity of 600 cubic meters, which would be bottled at the plant and sold to other needy health facilities.
Mrs Osei Opare praised the board and management of KATH for such proactive leadership, which had helped solve one of the critical challenges facing the second largest health facility in Ghana.
She said leadership of state health institutions needed to emulate such shining example and device workable strategies that would help improve quality health care services to the people.
Mr Alex Abban, Deputy Minister of Health said the initiative of KATH was a clear demonstration that most agencies under the Ministry, such as the teaching hospitals, could innovate to attract critical facilities that could improve their operations, adding that, such health facilities should be able to fund projects by their own.
He said government would continue to provide the right atmosphere that would not only increase access of health care to all but also improve quality of service at all levels.
Dr Oheneba Owusu Danso, Chief Executive of KATH, said the inauguration of the plant had solved one of the most challenging issues at the facility.
He said as part of the contract, two engineers from the Hospital, have received adequate training on the plants at the manufacturing company in the USA, to ensure that the plants were diligently maintained without glitches, during operations.
Dr Owusu Danso pointed out that the growth and increasing expansion of the hospital were factored into decisions on the nature of oxygen plants procured, adding that, the new set of plants would provide excess oxygen for sale to other health facilities.
GNA
