About Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital

Historical Background

The hospital provides specialist psychiatric services as well as general outpatient services to the public. It accepts patients from all the regions of the country as well as neighbouring states, and foreign cases from La Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin are occasionally attended to. The late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first President of the Republic of Ghana, established the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital in 1965.

It was officially earmarked as a 500-bedded hospital, but due to Ghana's imminent hosting of the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) conference in May 1965, patients on rehabilitation at Adomi near Senchi in the Eastern Region and at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital were moved into the uncompleted structures at Ankaful. This was the humble beginning of the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital.

After its completion, the hospital was meant to be an ultra-modern health facility with a campus design of a complete township, including social amenities for staff such as a shopping centre, police station and bank. It was also to be fully equipped with modern hospital amenities including a Neurological Department, an operating theatre for neuro-surgery, and electroencephalographic (EEG) equipment. It is, however, sad to note that all of the above-mentioned equipment was removed to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, and the envisaged projects have never come to pass.

Politically, the hospital is located in the Komenda–Edina–Eguafo–Abrem (KEEA) Municipal Assembly, though it still maintains links with the Cape Coast Municipality. It is approximately 12.5 km from Cape Coast and 6 km from Elmina, occupying an estimated land area of about 1.5 square km. It sits at the village called Ankaful, from which it takes its name, and shares boundaries with the Ankaful Leprosy / General Hospital to the south and the Ankaful Prisons to the west and north, near Tsikweikrom village. The hospital has eleven (11) wards, of which seven (7) are operational.