Ghana: Nurses Join KATH Strike as Pressure Mounts on Health Minister to Reverse CEO Suspension

KATH

The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) is now facing a widening industrial crisis as the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has joined the ongoing strike action.

This has escalated demands for the immediate reinstatement of the hospital’s suspended Chief Executive Officer, Dr Paa Kwesi Baidoo.

In a statement issued on Saturday, June 6, the association condemned the two-week suspension directed by the Minister of Health, calling it “unnecessary” and a distraction from the real challenges plaguing the facility. The nurses and midwives argued that the suspension does nothing to address deep-seated infrastructural deficits, chronic congestion, inadequate logistics, and persistent resource constraints.

“The two-week suspension of the Chief Executive Officer is unnecessary and is definitely not the solution to the enormous pressure, infrastructural challenges, congestion, inadequate logistics, and resource constraints confronting the hospital daily,” the statement read.

The GRNMA warned that if the Minister of Health fails to reverse the directive, its members would join the strike effective 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 7. “We wish to state categorically that effective 8:00 am 7th June 2026, Nurses and Midwives at KATH will join the strike if the directive from the Honourable Minister for Health is not reversed,” the association added.

The group insisted that patient safety and quality healthcare delivery cannot be achieved through the suspension of the CEO, stressing that systemic issues remain unaddressed. They called on the Ministry of Health to fast-track the operationalisation of long-awaited health facilities to decongest KATH, and urged the government to prioritise urgent retooling, infrastructural expansion, and improved resource allocation.

The nurses and midwives further demanded the immediate withdrawal of the CEO’s suspension, arguing that Dr. Baidoo must be allowed to continue managing the hospital to help ease operational pressures and support overstretched health workers, particularly in the emergency department.

In a plea for calm, the association also urged the KATH Board to intervene and prevent further escalation of industrial action that could severely disrupt healthcare delivery to thousands of patients.

With the National Labour Commission already having ordered doctors to call off a separate strike, the addition of nurses and midwives now deepens the crisis at one of Ghana’s leading teaching hospitals.

 

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