The Registrar of the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HeFRA), Dr. Winfred Korletey Baah, has raised serious concern about the growing number of health facilities operating in Ghana without valid licences.
Speaking on Business Edge on Metro TV, Dr. Baah described the situation as dangerous and a major threat to public safety.
“No matter how nice a facility looks, if it’s not licensed, your life is at stake,” he warned.
“You won’t try it if you knew. So why should people be practising without a licence?”
He said HeFRA has intensified monitoring and enforcement, closing down several institutions found to be operating illegally.
According to him, some of these facilities include both private and public hospitals.
“People think we only go after private institutions. It’s not so,” he explained.
“Whether it’s public or private, it’s about human lives. If a facility is unqualified and gives you wrong treatment, you won’t say because it’s public, it’s okay.”
Dr. Baah revealed that some health institutions, including a public one in the Ashanti Region, will soon be closed down for operating under unsafe or expired conditions.
“By Friday, I’ll bring a release. You’ll see one facility we are closing down – very bad,” he said, adding that his team is “doing due diligence” before making it public.
HeFRA, established under Act 829 of 2011, is responsible for licensing and regulating all public and private health facilities in Ghana.
The Registrar said the agency has shut down about 52 facilities since he took office this year.
“So far we’ve closed down about 52 of them,” he stated. “It’s not that they just started operating. They’ve been operating illegally for years because our capacity was low. But we’ve changed the strategy and decentralised our operations.”
He added that some hospitals, including well-known ones, had gone years without renewing their licences.
“We found that the Guinness Ghana Clinic had been practising with an expired licence for about two years,” Dr. Baah revealed.
“They were attending to people with people’s lives without renewing their licence.”
He cautioned health practitioners that operating without a valid licence could have legal consequences if anything goes wrong with a patient.
“If you are not licensed at all, your case is dead on arrival,” he said.
“The lawyers will mesmerise you. Once the court knows you are not licensed, you are doomed.”
The HeFRA boss urged the public to always check whether a facility is properly licensed before seeking care.
“The law says every facility must display its licence in a visible place for every patient walking in to see,” he explained.
“It is even an offence not to display your licence.”
He encouraged citizens to report suspicious facilities to HeFRA, promising that the agency will soon publish an online database of all licensed facilities for easy verification.
“Very soon we are going to publish the list of licensed facilities on our website,” he said.
“You’ll be able to check whether a facility is licensed or not.”
Despite the agency’s limited manpower, with only 137 staff nationwide, Dr. Baah said HeFRA is using digital tools and regional offices to expand its oversight.
“We are going very digital,” he said.
“We’ve developed an online tool to license CHPS compounds. Many of them close to 6,000 have not been licensed, but we’ve started this week.”
He said the aim is to ensure quality care as Ghana prepares to roll out its free primary healthcare policy.
“It’s about lives,” he stressed.
“Anything that is free but lacks quality, people will abandon. We want to make sure Ghanaians walk into a hospital and feel safe.”
