The Management of the Komfo Anokye Teaching hospital (KATH) in Kumasi is set to launch an endowment fund to help run the facility.

The endowment fund seeks to raise funds from corporate organisations, philanthropists, and government institutions to enable management procure new equipment for the hospital.

Management revealed that majority of equipment at the facility are over-aged and are not functioning after intensive 10 years usage, especially equipment at the accident and emergency units (E&T).

The hospital needs at least GHC70 million to replace all damaged and old equipment while structures under constructions will also require some GHC50 million excluding the 40-year-old abandoned maternity block.

This, according to Dr. Oheneba Adanso, chief executive of the hospital, among other things are the main factors affecting quality health care for patients who accesses the facility.

“We have a huge unpaid bills which work negatively against our recoupment of investments even for just the clinical services. We are buying medicines, we are buying consumable items for which we use to carry out clinical services. Unfortunately, giving the status of our economy in certain areas. Some clients are unable to foot their bills. All these things are compiled and sometimes waved. Some even give undertaking for payment to be paid in installments but you never see them again."

“We think that as part of this, the endowment fund will assist some of these underprivileged people to settle some of their bills. Just so that at the worst stage Okomfo Anokye should be able to recoup its investments to the highest minimum for us to be able to run the service adequately in terms of investment in our medicines and in our consumables and non-medicine consumables."

"So therefore it is also another avenue to assist the hospital to ensure that we get investment or we get revenues for the work that we do here so that we don’t run short of the much needed funds to run the services,” he said at a news conference in Kumasi.

He continued: “And then ultimately it constraints us to actually manage our resources in terms of payments to our suppliers in terms of buying new equipment’s and in terms of replacing equipment. We have set up an 11 member trustee team and by the rules, Okomfo Anokye and the board shall not be the manager for this investment fund."

"The trustees will actually be the oversight managers of this fund and at any point in time it is the management and the board that shall request to this management trustees so that the release of funding, the spending of money from this endowment fund will be very much more disciplined and will be applied for the purpose for which it is intended for”.