A Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Development Studies, Dr. Issahaku Haruna has urged government to invest more funds into the Agenda 111 project if it desires to complete the project by 2025.
According to him, the current funds government has allocated to the project is not enough to help complete the estimated number of district hospitals government seeks to build.
The Agenda 111 project launched by President Akufo Addo on August 17 this year is to ensure that every Ghanaian has access to quality healthcare services.
The project together with the National Health Insurance Scheme will boost the provision of healthcare infrastructure and financial accessibility to healthcare, in line with the government’s commitment to ensuring universal health care to all citizens and attainment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3).
Speaking at a forum held by the Star Ghana Foundation in collaboration with JOY NEWS under the Partnership Beyond Aid project on the theme, 2022 budget for health and education services delivery in a COVID-19 era, Dr. Haruna indicated that the 3.5 billion Ghana cedis government has allocated to the project can only help complete 35 and not 101 district hospitals thus the need to increase the funding for the project.
He stressed that “the estimated cost of each of the 101 hospitals is around 16.88 million US dollars. If you now add the cost for the 101 district hospitals, it will sum up to 1.7billion dollars or about 10.1 billion Ghana cedis. But if you look at the budget allocation from 2021 to 2025, the total is 3.5 billion, leaving a very huge gap”
He also reiterated saying the government needs to do more in terms of financing if it aims at completing the agenda 111 projects by 2025.
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Source: Rosemond Asmah/ATLFMNEWS
