First phase of Legon Medical Centre to be ready soon
The first phase of the University of Ghana Teaching Hospital, Legon, is to be fully operational by July this year.
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The 650-bed facility is 95 per cent complete and is expected to provide training, research and health-delivery services.
Cutting-edge facility
Phase one comprises eight separate buildings which will house different specialised centres such as emergency, imaging, operating theatres, laboratories, among other facilities.
The second phase of the project, which will start soon after the completion of the first phase, will increase the beds at the facility by 400, provide specialist facilities, including a heart centre, a cancer treatment centre and a rehabilitation centre, as well as a hotel for families of patients.
The $217-million project, located near the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana, Legon, is being funded with a loan facility from the Government of Israel, with counterpart funding from the Ghana government.
Ghanaian professionals
In an interview after a tour of the facility, the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, said a significant number of Ghanaian medical professionals abroad had expressed the desire to work at the facility.
The hospital, he said, would be used as the principal training facility for medical students and specialists of the University of Ghana Medical School.
Dr Bampoe said the facility would also be able to train more healthcare workers, including nurses, to help reduce the patient:doctor ratio in the country.
Medical tourism
He said it would also attract fee-paying patients, as it would operate as a business centre, while providing services for the vulnerable.
The hospital, according to the deputy minister, would also be an ideal place for medical tourism in the country.
He said some doctors had been sent to Israel to be trained at the Sheba Medical Centre on how to operate the cutting-edge technologies installed at the facility.
The project is being undertaken by Messrs Engineering and Development Consultants Limited, with medical consultation provided by the Sheba Medical Centre.