“The interior of the state of the art ambulances recently commissioned and distributed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo can give life back to a dying patient”, these were the exact words of Former Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Bernard Allotey Jacobs.
He said the procurement and importation of the ambulances into the country is not only gratifying but will go a long way to save lives as well improve healthcare delivery in the country.
Speaking on a local radio station monitored by MyNewsGh.com, the Educated Fisherman as he prefers to be called praised successive governments for also importing ambulances but admitted that those of the current President tops them all.
“We all should face facts if you look at the inside and see the equipment and colour design it looks very attractive. If you are at the point of death, the colours in the ambulance can give you the vim to survive. The inside is great”, he observed.
“All those ambulances that were brought into the country from the Kufuor to Mahama regimes must be added to the current fleet. If they is the need to retool them, they should so we carve a new ambulance system. It would be prudent for the government to supply them ambulances to the Regional and Teaching Hospitals”, he appealed.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo last Tuesday 28th January 2020 fulfilled his “One Constituency One Ambulance” promise made to the people of Ghana through the Ministry of Special Development Initiative with the Ministry Health.
According to President Akufo-Addo, the 307 ambulances are “fitted with advanced life support equipment and tracking devices, to be distributed to 275 constituencies, i.e. 1-Constituency-1-Ambulance, to be managed by the National Ambulance Service, and the remainder of thirty-two (32) ambulances to the headquarters of the Service.”
Presenting the ambulances, at a ceremony at the Independence Square, the President noted that, when he took office in January 2017, the National Ambulance Service had 130 stations, 10 regional control rooms across the country, and only 55 ‘semi-functioning’ ambulances.
“In December 2015, two hundred (200) ambulances were supposedly purchased by the Mahama government, out of which only thirty (30) arrived in the country. As though this was not enough, the thirty (30) were declared “not fit for purpose because they had cardinal defects and did not come with any medical equipment. This was completely unacceptable, and my government was determined to rectify this unhappy state of affairs,” he said.
