Akufo-Addo announces ‘one constituency, one ambulance center’ promise
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has promised an ambulance centre for every constituency in the country.
This follows the unveiling of some 307 ambulances procured by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government for each of the 275 constituencies. The surplus will be added to the fleet of the national ambulance centre in Accra.
Mr Akufo-Addo was optimistic on Tuesday that “in the course of the year, 145 new ambulance stations will be created bringing the total to 275 stations ensuring that we have a one-constituency, one-ambulance situation”.
Speaking at a ceremony held at the Independence Square to commission the buses, Mr Akufo-Addo noted that the distribution of the life-saving vehicles fitted with modern medical equipment has ensured that the ambulance to population ratio has been reduced from 1: 524, 000 as at 2016 to 1: 84,000.
Prior to the arrival of the ambulances, the stock of ambulances in the country has been woefully inadequate with less than 60 functional vehicles serving the country with a population close to 30,000.
Improved emergency health systems, Mr Akufo-Addo added, remains a priority for the government. Hence, he announced financial clearance by the Ministry of Finance “to the National Ambulance Service to recruit and train 1, 477 emergency medical technicians”.
A total of 577 have already been engaged, he said, with processes underway to employ the rest.
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Cabinet is currently discussing the set-up of a national ambulance board which will be forwarded to parliament for consideration and enactment. The duty of the board is to identify funding sources for sustainable ambulance service operations.
The ambulances that will be assigned to the constituencies are integrated into the national property addressing system and calls will be automatically matched to the digital address of the caller.
This will enable the control centre to assign the nearest ambulance and efficiently locate the address where the emergency is needed for easy navigation.
The closest healthcare facility will also be made available to the ambulance for secondary medical attention for patients.
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Prior to the commission, the first batch of ambulances that arrived in the country was parked at the Parliament House for several months under the mercy of the weather.
“The Minister for Special Development Initiatives, who has been responsible for bringing them, told me about a month, six weeks ago that some of the ambulances were in; should she distribute them? And I said: ‘No, she shouldn’t’, she should wait till they all come in so one day, we can distribute them all at the same time to all 275 constituencies… I saw myself getting into a tremendous amount of issues if I started distributing some and others didn’t get it”.
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That was the response President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo offered at a recent press media encounter after a journalist posed a question about the 48 stationed ambulances while sick citizens are left to their fate.
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