The Health Ministry has defended suspending the chief executive of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), even as doctors, nurses and midwives widen a strike demanding his reinstatement.
At the centre of the standoff is a fight over who is to blame for a decision to stop taking emergency patients. The ministry calls the suspension a routine accountability step. The hospital’s staff call it punishment for a clinical judgement made to protect patients. Their walkout has stalled services at one of Ghana’s busiest referral centres.
The trouble began on June 3, when KATH management said it was temporarily halting admissions at its Accident and Emergency Centre because the unit was overwhelmed by congestion. Two days later, Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh directed the hospital board to suspend the chief executive, Dr Paa Kwesi Baidoo, for two weeks, citing the Ghana Health Service and Teaching Hospitals Act. The ministry said the admissions halt went against President John Dramani Mahama’s directive that emergency cases should not be turned away by public hospitals.
In its Sunday statement, the ministry described the strike as unfortunate and pressed staff to return to work. It said the suspension touched only Baidoo’s administrative role, not his standing as a doctor, and was meant to allow an independent inquiry into how the closure was handled.
Health workers reject that account. Doctors withdrew their services from the morning of June 6, and nurses and midwives joined a day later. The Ghana Medical Association demanded Baidoo’s reinstatement within three days, calling the suspension “unjustified and without basis.” Staff argue the move to pause admissions was a collective decision as capacity ran out, not the chief executive acting alone.
The ministry said it had told the Ghana Health Service to arrange contingency cover so emergency care continues while talks go on. It also pointed to wider plans to ease pressure on hospitals, among them the Agenda 111 building programme, new cardiac centres and a planned national emergency care facility.
The dispute reaches well beyond Kumasi. KATH is the main referral hospital for the Ashanti, Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Northern, Savannah and parts of the Middle Belt regions, so a long shutdown touches patients across a wide stretch of the country. Among the strikers’ demands is a clear hospital policy for when the emergency unit is full, plus firm timelines for opening the Sewua and Afari Military hospitals to share the load.
For now the two sides remain apart. The ministry wants staff back before the inquiry runs its course, while health workers say nothing moves until the suspension is lifted.
