For the first time in the history of the five northern regions, residents will have access to a dedicated cardiac care facility on their doorstep, following the construction of a Catheterisation Laboratory and full cardiothoracic centre at the Tamale Teaching Hospital.
President John Dramani Mahama disclosed this on Saturday during an inspection of the ongoing construction at the hospital.
He said the facility was a long overdue intervention for a part of the country that had for decades been left without specialist cardiac care.
Until now, any patient in the north who suffered a cardiovascular incident, a stroke or a cardiac emergency had to be stabilised as best as possible before being referred hundreds of kilometres south to either Kumasi or Accra for treatment, a journey that cost many their lives.
“Those who died, died. Those who survived, survived. Today we are giving the people in the whole of the north of this country a facility where they also can have a good chance of survival in case they have a cardiac incident,” President Mahama said.
The President explained that the decision to build the facility in Tamale came after the government had already moved to procure Cath Labs for Accra and Kumasi, following the death of a medical doctor who needed urgent angioplasty but found both machines out of service.
The question was then asked why Tamale should not also have one, and a third unit was added to ensure geographical coverage across the country.
When the Tamale equipment arrived, however, it became clear that a standalone Cath Lab was not enough. Unlike the cardio centre in Accra, which already had an ICU, wards and consulting rooms in place, Tamale had none of the supporting infrastructure needed to make the machine functional.
The government therefore took the decision to build a full cardiothoracic centre around it, complete with all the ancillary services required to respond to cardiac emergencies.
The facility is funded through the Ghana Medical Trust and Mahama Cares, two of the government’s flagship health financing initiatives, and the President said all the equipment was already available and waiting for the construction work to be completed.
“Maybe by next year we will all come back and commission the first cardiothoracic centre in the whole of the Savannah area,” the President said.
He also expressed confidence that the facility would quickly become a draw for patients beyond Ghana’s borders.
“I am sure that patients even from Burkina Faso and other parts of the sub-region are going to come here to seek treatment,” he said
