More than 110 children with serious heart conditions have received lifesaving treatment at the National Cardiothoracic Centre at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, one year after the establishment of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund.
The Head of the Centre, Dr Kow Entsua-Mensah, disclosed this in an interview reflecting on the first anniversary of the Fund. He said more than 150 patients who otherwise faced enormous financial barriers to lifesaving cardiac treatment are being cared for at the centre alone, with about 110 of them being children.
Dr Entsua-Mensah said behind every number is a human being whose future could easily have been cut short simply because a family could not afford the cost of lifesaving treatment. He said the children would grow stronger, play with their peers, return to school, pursue education and vocational training and eventually contribute to Ghana's development.
He posed a question about the significance of the intervention, asking who knows what these children will become. He noted that among them could be Ghana's future doctors, teachers, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists and national leaders, and that without treatment, some of those possibilities could have disappeared before they ever had the opportunity to unfold.
The impact of the Trust Fund at the centre goes beyond paying for patients' treatment. In 2025, fire destroyed the centre's cardiac catheterisation laboratory, a critical facility for diagnosing and treating complex heart conditions. By the end of July 2026, the Ghana Medical Trust Fund had replaced the destroyed facility with a state-of-the-art cardiac catheterisation centre.
Since the new facility opened, more than 60 patients have undergone complex lifesaving procedures there, with many more patients lined up for treatment and emergency cases continuing to be managed. During the Trust Fund's initial 50-case pilot, designed to test its systems, 15 patients were sponsored to undergo lifesaving procedures at the centre. Today, that intervention has expanded dramatically, with more than 150 patients onboarded for care at the centre.
Dr Entsua-Mensah said the significance of the Fund cannot be measured only in cedis, equipment purchased or procedures performed, but also in lives restored and hope returned to families. He said adults whose illnesses had taken them away from their normal lives and livelihoods now have an opportunity to receive treatment and return to work, while children whose futures were threatened by serious heart conditions have an opportunity to grow and pursue their aspirations.
He described the intervention as a great investment in humanity. He observed that one of the Fund's most significant achievements is the renewed confidence it is creating among ordinary families, with the assurance that falling seriously ill does not necessarily mean a patient's survival must depend solely on how much money that patient or family can raise. Through the Fund, he said, people can increasingly have confidence that the state has an instrument through which it can come to their aid when they face critical illness.
Dr Entsua-Mensah said the transformation was not confined to Korle Bu. He pointed to the development of cardiology centres at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi and the Tamale Teaching Hospital as another important part of the emerging national cardiac-care network. For decades, patients with complex cardiac conditions have had to travel considerable distances to Accra for specialised treatment at the National Cardiothoracic Centre.
He said the National Cardiothoracic Centre would be able to collaborate with its counterparts in Kumasi and Tamale, mentor and train professionals there and extend specialist services beyond Accra. Ultimately, patients from those parts of the country would no longer necessarily have to travel to the capital for treatment. He said lifesaving cardiac care was being brought closer to the people, and that Kumasi and Tamale could only be the beginning, with specialist services eventually extending to other parts of Ghana.
One year into the existence of the Fund, Dr Entsua-Mensah said something long imagined within Ghana's specialist healthcare system was finally beginning to take shape. He said that for the first time, what they had dreamt of and hoped for was beginning to unfold right before their eyes.
He said the most compelling evidence of that unfolding dream would not be found in buildings, machines or statistics, but in a child returning to school after heart surgery, in parents who once feared they might lose their child but can now watch that child run and play again, in an adult returning to work after illness threatened a family's livelihood, and in the more than 110 children currently being given another chance at life.
