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Government is to construct 1,600 Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds across the country from 2014 to 2016, with 700 to be constructed this year. It will be funded from the Special Fund established by the President with 10% salary cut of the President and all other government appointees. President Mahama made this known at a ceremony in Tamale to commission the first phase of the Tamale Teaching Hospital. The 400-bed ultra-modern health edifice with up-to-date medical facilities which include a neurosurgical, accident, maternal health and cervical cancer, family planning, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) units cost �39.3 million to construct. The President also cut sod for the construction of the second phase of a 400-bed hospital which is expected to cost �48.5 million. With both phases partly funded by the Dutch government, the facility will include a full theatre, five storey tutorial block, and five storey surgical theatres. There will also be a three storey block accident and emergency unit, a new mortuary, pathology and laboratory, a plant to produce medical gases including oxygen, and a power plant to provide subsidiary power for the hospital, waste treatment unit and staff accommodation. President Mahama noted that the hospital was constructed in 1974 as at the time the population of the town was about 500,000, which has quadrupled and therefore put a lot of pressure on the limited facilities in the hospital. He added that the expansion of the hospital is expected to improve and address the health challenges of the north and other parts of the country and beyond for the hospital has been a referral centre for patients from other neighbouring countries in the West African sub-region. The President also admonished the staff of the hospital to ensure a good maintenance culture and to own the project, adding that government needs the support of everybody in the prosecution of its developmental agenda. The President also noted that government would roll out nine polyclinics in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions. The Minister for Health, Sherry Aryittey, also thanked Mr Harry Van Dijk for the support the country has enjoyed from the Dutch government, especially in the area of health care, and called on the management and staff of the hospital to keep it in good shape. The acting Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Dr Prosper Akambong, thanked the governments of Ghana and Netherlands for the support and assured the President that the hospital�s management would take pragmatic steps to keep the facility in good shape.