A global health expert has said government should focus on finding immediate measures to combat Covid-19 instead of building medical facilities to fight the virus.
Adjunct Professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health, Nana Kofi Quakyi explained that building hospitals is a long term solution for the country but does not cater to the issues that the country faces currently in the fight against Covid-19.
“We have to bear in mind that right now on the ground we have the greatest health emergency problem there is and that’s where our attention should be focused,” Dr Quakyi told Daniel Dadzie on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Monday.
President Akufo-Addo during his 8th address to the nation on measures taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the country announced plans for the construction of the hospitals.
He said the pandemic has exposed the unequal distribution of health facilities in the country and his government intends to address that.
“…We must do something urgently about this. That is why government has decided to undertake a major investment in our healthcare infrastructure, the largest in our history. We will, this year, begin constructing 88 hospitals in the districts without hospitals,” he said.
But the Adjunct Professor says government must address the here and now.
Dr Quakyi stressed that issues such as clarity on data and explanation on why certain decisions are being made should be treated as urgent information by government and disclosed to the citizenry.
“There are things regarding specifics, when we will get data from the Ghana Health Service, the specifics about when we have more clarity on statistics that we use to make certain determinations and more explanation about why we are using the positivity rate as the main determining factor,” the health expert added.
He commended the President’s decision to extend the ban on public gatherings by an additional two weeks.