The 307 new ambulances commissioned by President Akufo-Addo to be distributed to 275 Constituencies in the Country cost $40,831,000.
Each of the ambulances cost $133,000 with two years warranty and full premium insurance being handled by a local company.
Minister for Special Development Initiatives, Mavis Hawa Koomson said the amount for each of the ambulances includes all procurement processes and insurance, adding, all the ambulances would be taken to the regions for inventory before they are handed over to the Constituencies without any funfair on their arrival.
President Akufo-Addo said a National Ambulance and Service Bill which identifies the funding sources of the National Ambulance Service (NAS) was being worked on and will soon be forwarded to Cabinet for consideration.
He said the government has provided a digitized state of the art ambulance dispatch management system integrated with national digital addressing system where all emergency calls will automatically generate the address to enable the control center to determine the nearest ambulance to dispatch and also allow the ambulance to identify easily any health care facility suitable for the emergency.
As part of the operations of the National Ambulance Service, 450 Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) have been trained.
The new ambulances are to be distributed in all 275 constituencies in Ghana in fulfillment of the government’s 2016 election campaign to help improve emergency healthcare delivery.
The programme is under the Ministry of Special Development Initiative christened, “One Constituency, One Ambulance”.
Source: Kofi Atakora
