The more-than a century-old Accra Psychiatric Hospital is currently like a “congested prison” but its redevelopment in phases, which starts from June 2022, aims to upgrade it to a 220-bed state-of-the-art facility, the Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Authority (MHA), Dr Akwasi Osei, has said.

Denying reports by the Herald newspaper that the 12-acre property on which the hospital sits has been sold to a developer with links to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta for private purposes, Dr Osei said the facility, which was originally built as an asylum in 1906, is currently not fit for purpose in terms of architecture and functionality as well as not dignifying for the inmates.

Dr Osei told Kwame Obeng Sarkodie on Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Tuesday, 15 March 2022 that even though it has undergone several bouts of charity-funded retrofitting over the decades, the deteriorating facility needs a facelift. 

“It wasn’t really built as a hospital but an asylum”, Dr Osei told Obeng Sarkodie.

The upgrade of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital à la the Ridge Hospital (now Greater Accra Regional Hospital) redevelopment project, is scheduled to start in June 2022, Dr Osei revealed.

He explained that the phased nature of the intended redevelopment will allow the facility to juggle the inmates around as the work proceeds since it will not necessitate a one-go raze of the whole facility.

In his view, the current facility is “very primitive” in nature, which does not speak well of Ghana to the rest of the world, thus, the need for redevelopment.

For instance, he noted that the special ward for serious and forensic cases, which is meant for between 40 and 60 people now houses about 120 patients.

According to him, the new facility will be less sprawling than the current 600-bed primitive one since all the regional and district hospitals being put up across the country under the government’s Agenda 111 project, have psychiatric units to cater to the needs of patients in all corners of the country, thus, needless to have them converge on the Accra Psychiatric Hospital for such care.

He said Sutherland and Sutherland Associates are the architects working on the project but said he did not know who the contractor was