Minister commissions 500-bed hostel facility for Adventist Nursing/Midwifery College

The Deputy Minister of Health, Tina Naa Ayele Mensah, has commissioned a 500-bed capacity hostel facility for the Seventh-day Adventist Nursing and Midwifery Training College, at its Barekese campus in the Atwima Nwabiagya North district of the Ashanti region.

The contract sum was GHS609,2480.04 fully funded by the College from its Internally Generated Funds with support from the SDA church.

The facility is to help the college absorb more graduates from the Free Senior High School Programme and thereby, reduce unemployment in the country.

The second reason is to relocate more of its students from the main campus, Kwadaso.

The long term plan, however, is to turn the Kwadaso campus into a training site for specialised nurses in the areas of critical care, peri-operative, emergency, public health and geriatric nursing among others.

Land

The College, established in 2005 was given the land at Barekese by the late chief of the area, Nana Kwame Awuah of which the development started in 2013.

The construction of the hostel facility was started in November 2020 and completed in November 2021.

Inauguration

The Deputy Minister, Ms Mensah said the ministry was working assiduously to ensure that a quality human resource base is available to achieve the vision of a healthy population for national development.

"Nurses and Midwives play an integral part in the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal Three through universal health coverage," she said.

Speaking on the theme: "Building excellence in nursing and Midwifery education in achieving universal health coverage: the role of stakeholders in infrastructure development," Ms Mensah said as a result, the government was working tirelessly to ensure that quality training, equitable distribution of a competent health workforce and improvement in health infrastructure.

Principal

The Principal of the college, Mr Daniel Attah-Tuffour, appealed to the government to help develop the rest of 50 per cent of undeveloped land to provide more infrastructure to students.

"The college needs more lecture halls and hostel for the male students," he said.

"The college would be grateful if the uncompleted three-storey hostel for males students would be completed for the College," he said.

Mr Attah-Tuffour appealed on behalf of all health training institutions if they could be rolled onto the GETfund to be able to able to benefit from projects.

He assured the government that the facility would train more nurses to fill vacancies under its Agenda 111 health facilities.

Exec Director

The Executive Director of the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), Dr Peter Yeboah, said the ceremony affirmed the timeless church-state partnership in health delivery.

He said CHAG was improving access to quality health service for all people living in Ghana and producing critical human resources for health for the Ghanaian health sector.

Dr Yeboah called on stakeholders including churches and communities to re-examine the responsibilities in building the necessary health infrastructure for human resources for health development in the interest of national health security.