Weija Gbawe residents protest idle 120‑bed children’s hospital
A fully equipped children’s hospital sitting empty for two years finally pushed residents of Weija Gbawe over the edge on Tuesday, as demonstrators dressed in red and black flooded the streets demanding that the facility be opened without further delay.
The protest, staged on May 2, was driven by a community that says it has watched a completed, fully furnished specialist hospital gather dust while children travel long distances for care, healthcare workers remain unemployed and nearby facilities buckle under pressure.
The frustration was raw and personal. A pharmacy graduate at the demonstration spelled out what the closure means at an individual level. “I’m here purposely because I want this facility to be open. I studied pharmacy in school, now I’m a graduate, and I’m home doing nothing. This facility must be open so that I can get the opportunity to work and attend to patients. That is why I am here.”
For parents, the consequences have been more immediate. “I want the government to open this facility because our children are suffering. Sometimes, the traffic you go through before getting to a children’s hospital is too much. So we plead with the government to intervene,” one resident told JoyNews.
Another protester, who said they had been inside the building, was baffled by its continued closure. “The facility was completed about two years ago, and I have had the opportunity to enter. Everything is in order and ready. Even the environment alone can help with the healing process of a child, so we don’t understand why it is not operational.”
The Member of Parliament for Weija-Gbawe, Jerry Ahmed Shaib, stood with the protesters and made no attempt to soften his assessment of the situation. The 120-bed facility, he said, is fitted with a CT scanner, laboratories, three theatres and a mother’s hostel, and every day it sits idle carries a cost that goes beyond money.
“I feel very sad about the situation. I have been here on numerous occasions. You can imagine how much money we are paying just to keep the lights on and maintain equipment like the CT scan. You can also imagine the lives we’ve lost,” he said.
Shaib also recounted a visit to a nearby hospital where a patient was receiving oxygen while seated, a direct consequence, he argued, of the available specialist facility remaining out of service. “This is a facility that has a 120-bed capacity, with a mother’s hostel and three major theatres. Everything is ready. There is no reason for it not to be operational,” he added.
He urged that the decision to commission the hospital be kept clear of political calculation, insisting that the health of children in the constituency cannot wait on partisan timing.
Residents are demanding urgent government action to commission and open the facility, before, as some protesters warned, more preventable deaths occur in its shadow.
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