MTN Ghana Foundation revisits Keta Municipal Hospital, two years after Maternity and Child Health Block handover

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MTN Ghana Foundation, recently revisited the Keta Municipal Hospital to assess the impact of a Maternity and Child Health Block it built for the hospital two years ago, as part of activities marking MTN's 30th anniversary in Ghana.

The visit forms part of a broader review MTN is undertaking to track how impactful its social intervention projects have been across the communities they were built for.

Speaking to the team during the visit, Dr. Farouk Adams Iddrisu, the Hospital Administrator, gave an account of how the facility has transformed maternal and child healthcare delivery in the Keta Municipality since it was commissioned in March 2024.

Before the project, Dr. Iddrisu said, the Keta Municipal Hospital's maternity and child health unit had just 11 beds, leaving the facility severely congested and struggling to keep up with demand. That congestion, he said, contributed directly to troubling rates of maternal and infant mortality at the hospital.

"For some time, Keta Municipal Hospital was really struggling, especially when it came to maternal and infant mortality," Dr. Iddrisu said, explaining that the limited bed capacity meant mothers and newborns were often at risk simply due to overcrowding.

To address the gap, MTN Ghana Foundation constructed a new Maternity and Child Health Block for the hospital, officially opened on March 7, 2024. Dr. Iddrisu described the current total bed capacity as having grown drastically, from the original 11 beds to well over 100.

He described the new block as a "one-stop shop" equipped with the facilities like the scan rooms, laboratories, pharmacies, and equipments needed to make childbirth significantly safer for mothers and infants.

The impact, according to Dr. Iddrisu, has been life-changing. Where maternal and infant deaths were previously high, the hospital recorded only eight mortality cases since the facility's inception, and, notably, ZERO recorded mortality cases so far in 2026.

"Their maternal mortality rate and the infant mortality has dropped significantly," he said, describing the improvement as unprecedented for the facility.

Dr. Iddrisu said the hospital has also seen a rise in patients travelling from outside the Keta Municipality to give birth at the facility, citing testimonials from mothers who travelled as far as Accra, because of the safety and quality of care available at the new block.

“At the old block, we had to share the theater room with accident victims or sick patients, which put our lives at risk because we had to wait for them to be treated first. But having a dedicated maternity block and theater to ourselves has enabled us to get urgent care,” shared by a new mother at the Keta Municipal Hospital.

The two-year follow-up visit was designed to gather direct feedback from hospital leadership and the community on how the facility has performed since its inauguration, feeding into MTN's broader assessment of its social investment projects as part of its 30th anniversary milestone.

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