Ghana rolls out plans for a $480m Medical Village Project: Nigeria can do better

Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo recently announced plans to roll out the $480m Medical Village Project with the following major components: 700 bed adult hospital; 300 bed children’s hospital; 17 storey doctor’s consultation offices; 40 studio apartments for medical technicians , a fully equipped medical research centre, a 4 star 150 bed hotel , a 2 star 120 bed hotel , a medical shopping mall ,a seniors housing estate and  a helipad for emergency services. This project he said will certainly be the anchor upon which a new fortune of opportunities for the Ghanaian economy shall be unleashed.

Now my take : $480m only ? Not even up to a billion dollars !!

Put this figure beside the billions of dollars we as a Country have so far wasted through our annual ritual of budgetary provisions in the health and human services sector and  you should rightly feel indignant.

Most truthful persons will tell you that a project like this in Nigeria will not only cost well over $1bn but the project itself will stretch well past the original completion timeline and will attract multiple upward contract variations to push the eventual cost into several billions more than the original cost. This is a well rooted national culture of brazen corruption which fortunately we are now only gradually coming to terms with , under the Buhari administration as destructive and unsustainable.

The other key lesson here :
Ghana is less than one-fifth of Nigeria using major national profile indicators: population, land mass, GDP, natural resources, etc.

If they can build one such project , we deserve to have at least three such Medical Villages located across the Country to adequately serve us and the Ecowas region ; save our country billions in medical costs currently exported to other countries each year, as well as enable us build our home-grown health and human services sector in line with international best practices.

Surely Nigeria can do better!!

 

This article was written by Engr. Beks Dagogo- Jack