The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has commissioned a new Out Patients Department (OPD) facility and Virtual Medical Center at the Police Hospital in Accra.
He also launched a Police Emergency Medical Intervention Fund with an initial amount of GH¢6.1 million for the Ghana Police Service, and made a personal contribution of GH¢100,000 to it.
Nana Akufo-Addo also visited the Ghana Police Hospital yesterday for the first time since becoming President, during which he commissioned the two projects.
New OPD
The new OPD cost GH¢180,000 and would be dedicated to emergency cases only, in line with best practices. The facility consists of an Emergency Unit, a Public Health Unit, an Obstetrics and Gynecology Unit, including a Labor and Medical and Surgical Units.
In his address, the President commended the police administration and the management of the Police Hospital for constructing the new OPD. He explained that the new facility would help decongest the existing one, which, hitherto, was responsible for seeing to patients with emergency cases, as well as regular OPD visits.
He added that it would ensure a clear line of separation between emergency cases and routine OPD visits, thereby improving the quality of service delivery at the hospital.
Virtual Medical Centre
The Virtual Medical Center is an end-to-end video hospital management system that allows patients, regardless of location in the country, to undertake virtual consultations with healthcare professionals at the Ghana Police Hospital. The project cost an amount of GH¢50,000.
In his address, President Akufo-Addo indicated that officers of the service were guaranteed a protected platform for seamless consultations with the doctor. With the virtual OPD, a doctor would attend to patients through diagnosis, laboratory referrals, prescription of drugs, and subsequent reviews.
According to the President, all of these medical processes could be done without police personnel having to travel from their station. He continued that, “Indeed, if the medical situation of a patient demands a higher level of attention, the medical doctor would immediately make the necessary arrangements for the patient to be evacuated to the nearest medical facility for treatment.”
The President stated that the Virtual Medical Center, the first of its kind in the public sector, was indeed worthy of emulation and could not have come at a better time as the country continued to battle the scourge of COVID-19, which to a significant extent limited person-to-person contact.
Emergency Medical Fund
The President said he was delighted to have launched the GH¢6.1 million Police Emergency Medical Intervention Fund. He said it was aimed at providing immediate financial assistance for medical treatment for police officers who get injured in the line of duty. He asserted that the beneficiaries do not have to go through the usual bureaucratic and the associated delays that have in the past resulted in some cases in personnel losing their lives whilst awaiting treatment and the deterioration of medical conditions of others.”
As an opener, he presented the first three beneficiaries of the fund – Chief Inspector Mac Victor Anako, Inspector Theresa Ohene and Corporal Isaac Essuman Opoku – with money covering the cost of medical treatment in Ghana and abroad.
President Akufo-Addo was hopeful that all police officers who require medical treatment will receive the best care without recourse to the cost of treatment, “and I’m making a modest contribution of GH¢100,000 to the fund.”
IGP
In his address on the fund, the Inspector General of Police, Dr George Akuffo Dampare, said when the President got to know that it was private people who had to intervene to assist officers and men who got injured in the line of duty, he urged the Minister to ensure that there was a resource from the state to cater for such eventualities.
He added that in 2018, the government committed GHC 800 million to the retooling and transformation of the police service, which had culminated in over 900 vehicles and other departments.
He said the President ordered that all backlogs of promotions be rectified. According to the IGP, Ghana is the second most peaceful country in Africa and the 38th in the world, and this is a work in progress, which is part of the transformation agenda of the Ghana Police Service to become one of the best in the world.
