Mr Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, Minister of Health, on Friday, November 14, made an unannounced working visit to the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH) to evaluate service delivery, inspect ongoing projects and engage staff and patients on operational challenges.
The visit coincided with the hospital’s rollout of the newly procured Ghana Health Information Management System (GHIMS), which had gone live across departments.
Staff reported no major system faults but admitted that familiarising themselves with the new platform had caused minor delays.
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The minister toured key areas, including the polyclinic, paediatric ward, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, OPD and the network server room.
He assured staff that initial challenges were expected with new technologies, but emphasised that GHIMS represented a significant advancement over the previous Lightwave system.
He defended the decision to adopt the new platform, stressing that it was inappropriate for national health data to be hosted by a private vendor. Government, he said, was securing middleware to allow interoperability with future systems while maintaining full ownership of patient data.
Mr Akandoh urged staff to treat patients with dignity and pledged government’s support to improve working conditions
. He reaffirmed that the Free Primary Health Care policy would take effect by January, noting that President John Dramani Mahama had already held discussions with the World Health Organisation ahead of broader consultations.
He also underscored the importance of preventive health and announced progress on the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (MahamaCares), which now has an active Board and secretariat.
The fund will focus on non-communicable diseases and specialist training, complementing rather than competing with the NHIS.
The minister further reiterated plans to extend dialysis subsidies to private facilities, and outlined major health sector reforms, including posting at least 80 per cent of new doctors to underserved districts to correct the concentration of nearly half of Ghana’s doctors in Accra.
CCTH Chief Executive Officer, Dr Eric Kofi Ngyedu, updated the minister on developments at the facility, including new accommodation for patients’ relatives built with support from Ghana Gas, and an ultramodern eye centre nearing completion ahead of a March 2026 commissioning.
However, he appealed for support to restart the stalled emergency unit expansion, now 60 per cent complete, and raised concerns about the hospital’s ageing dialysis machines, 10 of which are completely obsolete.
He expressed optimism that new dialysis machines would be secured through the Ghana Medical Trust Fund as the hospital works to improve dialysis services.
Earlier in the day, the minister addressed the 67th annual conference of the Ghana Medical Association, where he advocated stronger public–private partnerships to strengthen national health care delivery.
