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By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 10 April, 2019
The Sunday evening rains gave Ghana the most appropriate theme for World Health Day 2019, but the health authorities stuck with their plan to highlight non-communicable diseases.
And that itself shows the layers of crises Ghana faces; talk about leadership that is asleep.
For some years now, the Institutional Care Division of the Ghana Health Service has sought to drum up attention to the threat posed by non-communicable diseases – diseases such as diabetes that are not infectious but are ending lives.
The theme for this year still kept that promise: “Universal Health Coverage [UHC]: Everyone, Everywhere”, with the slogan “Health for All.”
The story on Ghana’s Ministry of Health website read in parts thus:
“Addressing the media to mark the occasion, [the] Minister of Health, Mr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu, disclosed that government had embarked on several initiatives to enhance progress to improve on universal health coverage and the reduction of non-communicable related diseases in the country.
Some of these initiatives, Mr Manu said, included the development of a Non-Communicable Disease Policy, development of Non-Communicable Disease Strategic Plan, intensification of screening of diabetes amongst the population as well as the intensification of public health education on diabetes and other non-communicable diseases.
Health workers in Institutional Care, surely will be happy that they got attention, for several reasons.
First, bed availability data for Korle-Bu, the nation’s foremost teaching hospital, for example, is hard to get, with patients even in “ambulances” being turned away.
When a 71 year-old man who drove himself to Korlebu died upon being turned away, institutional care got a media hype, but almost 30 years ago, The Ghanaian Chronicle newspaper had a bold black banner headline, “Korle-Bu – A Graveyard?”. What has changed? Nothing!
Second, there is brouhaha over the 500 bed University of Ghana Hospital, whilst the International Maritime Hospital at Tema C3 also lies largely inactive while the seabreeze does what it does best.
And third, whilst the issues surrounding USD400 million worth of medicines at the Central Medical Stores in Tema which got burnt have not been properly resolved, policymakers have found drones to deliver medical supplies straight to health centres DIRECTLY, thereby sidestepping hospital supplies and storage incompetence.
So yes, institutional care needs attention.
BUT, we live in a nation with a literacy rate of……. well 15 percent (granted, my mentor says one percent!) and only one percent institutional sewage treated and 47 percent of solid waste NOT COLLECTED daily; with plastic bags removed from the omasums and abomasums of goats, sheep and cattle daily at slaughter houses; and dodgy ?borehole water used to prepare food daily whilst thanks to open defecation the rains push all this SHIT into our aquifers which we collect back as borehole water for use on vegetable farms, cooking and bathing.
Deep breath!!!
Certainly, a complex sentence to decipher. After all, do we all not need more thinking lessons?
“SANITATION AND SANITATION ALONE SHOULD BE OUR NUMBER ONE AND ONLY PRIORITY,” insists my mentor.
We see people walking knee deep in rain water, directing traffic and one does not think that such people are exposed to filthy fecal laden water that probably contains virulent antibiotic resistant organisms?
Do we not already know how erratic and haphazard our antibiotic use is on account of poverty and ignorance?
Let me hammer in some more facts to enlighten us.
Ghana is a Yellow Fever tropical country, a Tuberculosis crisis zone, a perennial cholera nation and the second nation in Africa for open defecation after Sudan.
Now, at World Health Day 2019, we have added diabetes to the disease burden.
O what a pathetic mess for a country with at least 122 ministers and over 250 honorable MPs planning to build a National Cathedral designed by an internationally acclaimed architect….clap offering, please!
Is this one of the reasons why Ministry of Health Television (MOHTV) was established in 2016, but it did not see the light of day, because the NCA did not grant the required license?
It is not too late.
Virtually, the same directors and health policy teams are still in place. They should re-strategize. In this day and age of Online Journalism, one does not need a license to do podcasts, webinars and live streaming.
The Handbook of Global Online Journalism (2012), edited by Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis, shows us the way: “In a study conducted in 52 countries, Nielsen (2010) found that consumers are prepared to pay for access to online [content] as long as its quality is superior to the currently available [content] and is not freely available on another site (79%)”.
The rains cannot rain down such important truths and ideas.
Surely we need more education not less; and certainly not more noise or inane political arguments by the cognitively biased nor do we need buffoonery.
Lives are at stake.
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