KATH strike: Punishing the messenger won’t fix overcrowding

Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) is bleeding.

Since 6 a.m. on Saturday, June 6, 2026, medical doctors at KATH have withdrawn services indefinitely after the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, instructed the hospital’s board to suspend the Chief Executive Officer, Dr Paa Kwesi Baidoo, for two weeks. 

The facts are straightforward. On Tuesday, June 2, KATH’s management, faced with severe congestion at the Emergency Medicine Department (EMD), temporarily suspended admission of new emergency cases, and coordinated with surrounding health facilities. 

The decision to suspend new admissions was first raised and justified by the doctors at the department, to which management agreed to prevent avoidable deaths.

The goal, by the hospital’s own account, was clinical: to prevent avoidable deaths and protect patients and staff amid capacity constraints.

The following day, after some stable patients were transferred to other hospitals and new ones retained by them, services resumed.

KATH is the principal tertiary referral centre for the middle and northern sectors, receiving cases from more than 12 regions, yet it continues to operate with infrastructure that has not kept pace with demand and modernity. Management’s decision was triage, not abandonment.

Two days later, on June 5, the Minister wrote to the Board Chairman of the hospital directing a two-week suspension of Dr Baidoo.

The Head of Public Affairs, Kwame Frimpong, was also ordered to be investigated for granting a media interview to explain the emergency decision.  

At an emergency meeting that same day, KATH doctors reviewed the developments and concluded that measures meant to safeguard patient safety had triggered disciplinary action against the very leader who authorised them. They announced a total withdrawal of services.

This is how not to run a teaching hospital.

First, the minister’s directive was strategically dangerous. Boards exist to provide oversight, not to rubber-stamp instructions from the sector minister.

If the minister had concerns about Dr Baidoo’s decision, the proper course was to set-up a fact-finding committee to investigate the matter.

Second, the punishment targets the wrong problem. KATH’s A&E is congested because Ghana’s health system is congested.

Patients are referred from 12 regions because district and regional hospitals lack specialists, equipment, CT scans and theatres.

Sewua Hospital and Afari Military Hospital, which could absorb pressure, are not yet operational. 

KATH itself needs retooling. When a CEO suspends new emergency admissions to prevent deaths in a corridor, he is managing scarcity.

Suspending him does not create more beds, more doctors, or more oxygen. It only creates fear among managers who may choose silence over safety next time.

Third, the doctors’ strike, while understandable as protest, must not lead to patient abandonment.

The Hippocratic oath and medical ethics require that emergency, ICU, maternity, dialysis and cancer services continue even during industrial action.

KATH doctors have said the strike is meant to draw attention to “patient and caregiver safety, clinical governance and sustainability.”

That message is valid. But it loses moral force if a trauma patient dies on the tarmac because no doctor is in the accident and emergency unit. 

The doctors are right to demand “explicit guidelines on patient overflow management and the circumstances under which admissions may be restricted.”

The Ministry, Ghana Health Service and teaching hospitals must jointly publish and enforce a national protocol: when A&E occupancy exceeds safe thresholds, when diversion to other facilities is triggered, how referrals are coordinated, and how liability is managed.

CEOs should not face suspension for following a protocol that prioritises lives over targets.

Beyond all this, we need timelines on Sewua Hospital, Afari Military Hospital, and KATH retooling must be met with dates and budgets, not assurances.

The 24-Hour Economy agenda depends on a functional referral network. If KATH is the only hospital that can handle neurosurgery or cardiothoracic cases for more than half the country, then underfunding is half the country’s survival chances.

Investigating a Public Affairs officer for explaining a clinical decision to the media is counterproductive.

Public hospitals are public institutions.

Citizens have a right to know why emergency admissions are suspended.

Silence breeds rumour. Transparency builds trust.

The board must drop that investigation.

The minister is right to be concerned about service delivery at KATH. But concern must translate into solutions, not suspensions.

The CEO’s decision to pause admissions was a clinical judgment made under duress.

If it was wrong, prove it with data and policy.

If it was right, thank him and fix the system that forced his hand.

Either way, do not make him the scapegoat for the decades of underinvestment.