Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director-General
• The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has asked the public to debunk reports that there are no beds at the ICU
• He said plans are in place to ensure that a storage facility is ready to receive the vaccine in August
• He said the country is ready and has all the resources to fight against the pandemic
Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director-General, Ghana Health Service (GHS), has refuted reports that there are no available Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds in the country to address the surging cases of COVID-19 in the country.
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye noted that measures have been put in place to address any potential disaster in the wake of the surge in new cases of the pandemic.
Reacting to reports that there are no beds in the ICU in the country to admit critical patients, Dr. Kumah-Aboagye explained that the reports are untrue and must be disregarded.
“Our ICUs are not full. For example, Ridge Hospital has 16 ICUs beds but as we speak, they only have three occupants. Ghana East has about 19 cases currently on admission with six on ICU. There is a plan to upgrade further with support from the COVID-19 Fund the ICU capacity at the Ridge Hospital. As I said, the critical cases have increased, but we are not overwhelmed yet,” he said in a Citi FM report monitored by GhanaWeb.
Speaking on what measures have been put in place to store and protect the vaccines that are expected to arrive in August, Mr Kuma-Aboagye said the infrastructure facility is being set up ahead of that.
“To prepare for more vaccines, we have had to upgrade our cold chain facilities especially the ultra-negative cochain which can store Pfizer, Moderna, and others.
“So far, with our collaboration with Zipline, we have the capacity to store about 1.7 million doses. Yesterday [Tuesday, July 13, 2021] we received 16 ultra-negative cold chain vaccines that will be distributed to all the 16 regions in the country to ensure we are able to vaccinate as many Ghanaians as possible,” he noted.