Features
Agenda 111: Potential impetus to health growth
A few days ago, the country witnessed a sod-cutting ceremony at Trede in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region to put up the construction of 111 regional and district hospitals to make Ghana emerge a country with excellent health facilities, the best in the sub-region of West Africa, to prove in practical terms that our lovely country is ready to let the world see how determined it is to lead the way to progress.
Of the 111 hospitals being constructed, 88 are district hospitals while the remaining 13 will represent regional hospitals with two others being specialised hospitals for psychiatric purposes for the Northern and Middle Belts.
In fact, this is the largest investment ever made in the medical history of Ghana since independence and having been carried out by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the country salutes this noble man for his vision and foresight.
On the face of it, many people will not see the health significance of this huge project and its relationship to economic growth in the country. It is, therefore, important for us to examine the relationship between this project and potential economic growth of the country.
MEANING OF HEALTH
Health does not necessarily refer to the absence of disease, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Indeed, the absence of diseases may be important but good health depends on that we find ourselves in a situation where people will be able to enjoy the peace to create activities that lead to socio-economic development in their lives and in the nation. This means that if people are hindered by obstacles that make it possible for them to promote development in their lives, the state of health cannot be said to be good.
There is no doubt that the state of health impacts economic growth in several ways. In the first place, when hospitals exist to cater for the health needs of the people, it makes them healthy and strong to increase productivity. Good health, due to productivity of hospitals, reduces illness on the part of people and enables them to get better nutrition following the guidance given them by the hospitals through quality medical care. This helps to lower absenteeism on the part of workers.
Apart from this, it helps to improve the state of absenteeism on the part of school children, leading to better learning and stronger population. Again, the absence of enough hospitals often leads to increasing illnesses that cannot be easily addressed due to the absence of medical facilities. As a result, efforts are made in form of alternative financial investments for the treatment of the sick population.
ENOUGH HOSPITALS
The availability of enough hospitals in the districts and regions would have made it possible for such investments or financial resources to have been used for alternative projects that could have stimulated a higher rate of socio-economic development. Thus, the 88 district hospitals under construction together with the other 13 regional hospitals including those for psychiatric purposes are meant to promote socio-economic development directly and indirectly in the country.
By implications, therefore, the state of health in a country affects economic growth through productivity of labour. When people fall sick and cannot be treated by reliable medical facilities, it means that the economic burden of illnesses will thwart every effort being made for greater productivity as well as general growth in the economy. If, for example, the health of children is negative due to frequent illnesses in areas without health facilities, the burden of child health will affect the future income of people through the impact health has on education.
Here, the children will not be able to go to school regularly and the financial burden incurred by parents will adversely affect the trend of education in the country. If the trend of education is affected in this way, what it means is that the quality of population produced for the future will not be able to live up to expectation in terms of excellent labour force and high productivity.
INDIRECT IMPACT
This indirect impact is easier to understand if it is observed at the family level. By way of illustration, if a family is healthy, both the mother and father can concentrate on their jobs and earn some money which will allow them to feed and protect the family. In the same way, it will empower them to send their children to school. Ultimately, therefore, healthy and well-nourished children will be able to perform better in school. As these children perform better in school, they will be able to prepare themselves positively for higher or better income in future.
What this means is that if parents can envisage that their children have a high probability of reaching adulthood, they will give birth to fewer children and be able to invest more in terms of time and effort in their health and education.The point being made is that when families suffer from poor health leading to loss of children through death, they decide to have many children so that after a few deaths, some of the children can remain as human assets for their parents.
It is for this reason that in the past, in many farming areas, many parents gave birth to many children so that after a few deaths some of them would be available to help them on their farms. This means that there is a link between availability of medical facilities and the social norms and values of societies. Thus, the construction of the 111 regional and district hospitals, thanks to President Akufo-Addo and his administration, has a huge positive implication for the country’s socio-economic development and should, therefore, not be taken for granted. In other words, families with good health will not necessarily have to bring forth many children and the few children brought forth will not place huge economic burden on the state, thereby accelerating the rate of socio-economic growth.
88 HOSPITALS AND MORE
It is good that the construction of the 88 district hospitals has begun with the sod-cutting by the President a few days back. Indeed, the construction of the regional hospitals, like the district hospitals, is also dependent on the availability of suitable land for that purpose and their construction will begin towards the end of the year as indicated by President Akufo-Addo. The good news is that each hospital will be a modern state-of-the-art single-storey health centre, featuring patient reception and processing area, administration, pharmacy, laboratories/diagnostics, physiotherapy, public health, accident, and emergency facilities.
BIGGEST HEALTH INVESTMENT
As already indicated, this would be the biggest investment in health care in the country and for this reason, they should be monitored on continuous basis by the districts through the District and Metropolitan Chief Executives, whether already on the job or will be in-coming new executives. The regional hospitals, when they also begin later, should be closely monitored by Regional Ministers so that regular accounts on progress of work can be given to Ghanaians who happen to be the chief stakeholders in this enterprise.
President Akufo-Addo and his administration mean business so the entire nation must give them, but not listen to desperate propagandists in the country, the support needed to propel Ghana to a higher pedestal of socio-economic development.
Contact email/WhatsApp of author:
Pradmat2013@gmail.com (0553318911)
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Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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