By Kofi Akordor
A colleague had a terrible encounter with a man described as a security guard. The man savagely attacked Eric from behind with a sharp object which nearly severed his jugular.
Eric had gone to inspect a property which had been advertised for rental. After a routine exchange of greetings with the man, Eric turned to make a call on his cell phone when the beast came after him. With his back turned towards his assailant, Eric had no defence.
The incident occurred at Lartebiokorshie so the obvious place to go was the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, a national pride handed over to this country by Governor Gordon Guggisburg, one of our colonial administrators.
Our friend was rushed to the accident or emergency centre of the sprawling hospital complex. It was a Sunday and there was no medical officer available to Eric who was bleeding profusely from the cut which might have damaged some vital veins.
Eric works with the Graphic Communications Group Limited and, therefore, there were a few phone numbers that could be contacted. It worked because through serious networking, a doctor was reached and help came for Eric. His wounds were stitched and he survived. Then came the other side of Korle-Bu. There was no bed to admit him. Here too, they had to make some makeshift arrangements for something for Eric to rest on.
Eric survived because as stated earlier, his organisation happened to be in a privileged position to pull strings or influence people. What about others who have no titles, no influential classmates or big people in politics or the dough to move things? Your guess is as good as mine. They are doomed!
An emergency or accident centre of any hospital, big or small, is expected to be a reception centre of all kinds of emergencies. It could be victims of road accidents which have become a national calamity, victims of domestic violence or a sudden rebellion on the part of one body organ or another. Whatever the case, an emergency case is an emergency case and must treated with equal urgency .
Korle-Bu is the country’s largest medical facility and it is located in Accra, the national capital. It is, therefore, a gone conclusion that the emergency or accident centre will be beehive of activity, not a pleasant one though.
As a teaching and the last referral medical facility, Korle-Bu is the last hope for the sick. But does Korle-Bu give hope? Korle-Bu has big names in the medical profession, maybe the biggest. From the young, brilliant doctors to the consultants with many years of distinguished practice. But there are many who will tell you that they will avoid Korle-Bu if they are in a position to do so.
The accident centre at Korle-Bu does not give hope. Relatives and friends of patients have to do a lot of running around in their desperate search for healing for their friends and relations. There are limited beds and patients (that is if they qualify to be described as such) would be seen writhing in pains on the bare floor while the overwhelmed medical staff become hostile. Sometimes you cannot blame the staff. They are humans and with inadequate facilities and their personal problems enveloping them, they easily become irritated.
There are few who are mercenaries any way and went into that field for the material gains they could make and, therefore, care very little for the sick.
That notwithstanding, there are many medical personnel and, I believe they are in the majority, who are prepared to sacrifice everything within their human limits to save lives if only they would get the necessary support.
The story of the emergency unit of Korle-Bu, which one would expect to be the best equipped for obvious reasons, does not exude any sense of national pride.
We are very familiar with the tale of two or more infants sharing the same bed at Korle-Bu of all places. A sick child must receive full medical attention and live in a congenial environment that would promote early recovery but that cannot happen when they are crammed in one bed.
Recently, patients in a ward at Korle-Bu had to be discharged prematurely because of the fear of the spread of a contagion due to overcrowding and unhygienic conditions of the wards.
Breast cancer has been identified as a major health challenge, especially among women. Extensive public education has, therefore, been launched and is being constantly carried by the media, which encourage women to go for testing.
The mammogram, which is the equipment used to detect early signs of the disease, is scarce in our hospitals. Reports from some ladies who have gone for testing at Korle-Bu indicate that our mammographs are obsolete and are not likely to give accurate and reliable readings.
What do we gain as a nation to educate the public on the dangers of breast cancer if we cannot provide the equipment to conduct the basic testing before even talking of treatment if the need arises?
The cardio specialist, Professor Frimpong Boateng, and others have sufficiently proved that we have some of the best men and women in the medical field that any nation can boast of. The strange thing is that whereas some of our big people are in haste to flee to foreign countries for medical treatment, foreigners who are aware of the prowess of our medical experts come here for heart surgery and other treatments.
Whether in the capitalist or socialist systems the cure for certain ailments is bound to be beyond the reach of some people because of their station and relocation in life. But we can still do better toby equipping our hospitals, especially Korle-Bu and other major hospitals, to enable them respond better to our health needs than they are doing now.
The success story of the National Cardio Centre is a vindication of our doctors and other medical experts who have proved that when given the necessary support , they can perform the same wonders that those in South Africa, Britain and others which are the destination of our leaders are capable of.
If the Korle-Bu story is not so good, it simply means the health sector is generally not healthy and we need as a nation to sit up. Eric and many others may scrape through with success, but what about the majority of people who do not have people to make a case for them?
These days we are afraid to tell the truth. You are either blind or playing mischief. But Korle-Bu is more or less a place where the rule of the jungle – survival of the fittest – prevails. Under the circumstances, Korle-Bu lacks the resources to offer solace and hope for the sick. It can no longer be considered as the source of last hope but rather, the place where your fate as a dead person is sealed; a place of no return.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Still marching at 55
By Kofi Akordor
IT is a ritual we all went through just like those before us and our children and those after them would continue it. We all marched to celebrate our country’s political independence from Great Britain, some barefooted and on an empty stomach.
So it came to pass that last Tuesday, March 6, 2012, as tradition demands, our children and junior brothers and sisters had to march to mark the 55th anniversary of our independence.
It seems this time people are getting fed up and are questioning the wisdom putting our children in the sun for long hours for this annual ritual of celebrating independence day.
The health implications of this exercise is quite obvious. This year recorded the tragic case of 14-year-old Goni Etornam of the Ho Fiave Seventh-Day Adventist Junior High School who collapsed and died while rehearsing for the anniversary parade.
On the parade day itself, there were photographs of some of the children who had collapsed and were receiving first aid, apparently from dehydration and fatigue. There was no doubt that the exercise was exerting a lot of pressure on the children who had to abandon some classes for weeks for rehearsals until the D-day.
Parents are beginning to question the essence of this exercise, especially in major cities like Accra, where the safety of the children can sometimes come under question. The subject was forcefully driven home by Dr Paa Kwasi Nduom, Founder and Leader of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), who felt there should be a better way of celebrating independence and not this archaic annual march pasts.
People may have their varied opinions, which is their democratic right. Aside the health and safety concerns, some of us suspect that the argument against the march past is strengthened more out of disillusionment. Many Ghanaians are now wondering whether indeed independence had brought the real freedom we claimed we gained on March 6, 1957 or just a freedom to sing an anthem and hoist a flag.
When we take a critical look at ourselves and then take a look at our contemporaries who were yesterday in the same trench with us, there is that feeling of failure, a huge void that many think should have been filled long ago. We are tired of mentioning the Malaysian example, but we need to be repeating it, if that would remind us that we have a long way to go.
That is why the celebration is no longer holding any attraction to many people who just go through the mechanical motion of seeing the day off. Look at the latest celebration. There were no flags proudly adorning our skies as was the case previously.
This year’s case was made worse after abysmal performance of the Black Stars, the senior national team in the African Cup of Nations jointly hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. “What is there to celebrate?” many are asking.
Things that we should have done many years ago have become the proud achievements of today. Even though the present government has made it a major policy to house our children in a more decent classrooms, there are still a large number of them who have the sky as the roof over their heads.
Our national capital, Accra, does not conjure the images of the administrative nerve centre of a country so much endowed with almost everything on the ground and under the bowels of the earth.
Ghana is about one of the few countries that can undertake a fully integrated aluminum industry without looking for any of the essential materials from outside. But we are still exporting raw bauxite at cheap price. The larger percentage of our cocoa is exported as raw beans, thus reducing the value of the cocoa.
The railway system we inherited from the colonial masters could not be maintained, let alone improved. The carnage on our roads has partly to do with the pressure on road transport whereby long distances have to be covered on vehicles plying not too good roads. Can we imagine the pleasure of travelling if there were rail lines linking Accra to the north?
Why should we continue to have only one refinery after 55 years? Why should the Kpong Intake Point continue to be the sole source of water supply to Tema and most parts of Accra when below the Kpong Dam, the water is a waste?
Our agriculture is still like the medieval times. So while the waters of the River Volta, another great gift from God, flow through vast arable lands and drains wastefully into the Atlantic, we, as nation, still have to rely on food imports from countries that could not count on a fraction of our resources.
Take every sector of our national life – agriculture, education, health, industry, housing, energy – and we need a strong convincing that we are doing better today than we did 30 or 40 years ago. We are tightly tied to the apron strings of the donor community, thus diminishing any semblance of independence.
To some extent, we may blame political instability and dictatorship, no matter the guise, for part of the problem. However, no matter how we look at it, leadership has been a major problem. A leadership that would carry the nation along its development path is missing somehow. That is why many Ghanaians, including those who were his avowed political opponents, are having nostalgic memories of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first President, the man whose selflessness. dedication and ambition continues to sustain this country and nurture hope for a better future.
We had a new hope when we went multiparty, a product of the 1992 Constitution. But the winner-takes-all doctrine has turned the political landscape into a huge minefield threatening our national existence. The country is polarised on partisan lines so much so that our leaders could not tell what is national or sectarian interest.
It seems if you take away religion, politics is the only sure way of making it big without much sweat, so people have become very aggressive towards their political opponents and the evidence is available on the airwaves and in the newspapers.
We do not have a common ground where, as a people, we can congregate and tackle development challenges with one voice and oneness of purpose. This is an election year and we are praying that this country remains united after December 7, 2012.
These and other considerations are making our compatriots skeptical about the fruits of independence and would, therefore, want their children to be left alone and not to be drawn into a celebration which does not have any meaning for them.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordorblogspot.com
IT is a ritual we all went through just like those before us and our children and those after them would continue it. We all marched to celebrate our country’s political independence from Great Britain, some barefooted and on an empty stomach.
So it came to pass that last Tuesday, March 6, 2012, as tradition demands, our children and junior brothers and sisters had to march to mark the 55th anniversary of our independence.
It seems this time people are getting fed up and are questioning the wisdom putting our children in the sun for long hours for this annual ritual of celebrating independence day.
The health implications of this exercise is quite obvious. This year recorded the tragic case of 14-year-old Goni Etornam of the Ho Fiave Seventh-Day Adventist Junior High School who collapsed and died while rehearsing for the anniversary parade.
On the parade day itself, there were photographs of some of the children who had collapsed and were receiving first aid, apparently from dehydration and fatigue. There was no doubt that the exercise was exerting a lot of pressure on the children who had to abandon some classes for weeks for rehearsals until the D-day.
Parents are beginning to question the essence of this exercise, especially in major cities like Accra, where the safety of the children can sometimes come under question. The subject was forcefully driven home by Dr Paa Kwasi Nduom, Founder and Leader of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), who felt there should be a better way of celebrating independence and not this archaic annual march pasts.
People may have their varied opinions, which is their democratic right. Aside the health and safety concerns, some of us suspect that the argument against the march past is strengthened more out of disillusionment. Many Ghanaians are now wondering whether indeed independence had brought the real freedom we claimed we gained on March 6, 1957 or just a freedom to sing an anthem and hoist a flag.
When we take a critical look at ourselves and then take a look at our contemporaries who were yesterday in the same trench with us, there is that feeling of failure, a huge void that many think should have been filled long ago. We are tired of mentioning the Malaysian example, but we need to be repeating it, if that would remind us that we have a long way to go.
That is why the celebration is no longer holding any attraction to many people who just go through the mechanical motion of seeing the day off. Look at the latest celebration. There were no flags proudly adorning our skies as was the case previously.
This year’s case was made worse after abysmal performance of the Black Stars, the senior national team in the African Cup of Nations jointly hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. “What is there to celebrate?” many are asking.
Things that we should have done many years ago have become the proud achievements of today. Even though the present government has made it a major policy to house our children in a more decent classrooms, there are still a large number of them who have the sky as the roof over their heads.
Our national capital, Accra, does not conjure the images of the administrative nerve centre of a country so much endowed with almost everything on the ground and under the bowels of the earth.
Ghana is about one of the few countries that can undertake a fully integrated aluminum industry without looking for any of the essential materials from outside. But we are still exporting raw bauxite at cheap price. The larger percentage of our cocoa is exported as raw beans, thus reducing the value of the cocoa.
The railway system we inherited from the colonial masters could not be maintained, let alone improved. The carnage on our roads has partly to do with the pressure on road transport whereby long distances have to be covered on vehicles plying not too good roads. Can we imagine the pleasure of travelling if there were rail lines linking Accra to the north?
Why should we continue to have only one refinery after 55 years? Why should the Kpong Intake Point continue to be the sole source of water supply to Tema and most parts of Accra when below the Kpong Dam, the water is a waste?
Our agriculture is still like the medieval times. So while the waters of the River Volta, another great gift from God, flow through vast arable lands and drains wastefully into the Atlantic, we, as nation, still have to rely on food imports from countries that could not count on a fraction of our resources.
Take every sector of our national life – agriculture, education, health, industry, housing, energy – and we need a strong convincing that we are doing better today than we did 30 or 40 years ago. We are tightly tied to the apron strings of the donor community, thus diminishing any semblance of independence.
To some extent, we may blame political instability and dictatorship, no matter the guise, for part of the problem. However, no matter how we look at it, leadership has been a major problem. A leadership that would carry the nation along its development path is missing somehow. That is why many Ghanaians, including those who were his avowed political opponents, are having nostalgic memories of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first President, the man whose selflessness. dedication and ambition continues to sustain this country and nurture hope for a better future.
We had a new hope when we went multiparty, a product of the 1992 Constitution. But the winner-takes-all doctrine has turned the political landscape into a huge minefield threatening our national existence. The country is polarised on partisan lines so much so that our leaders could not tell what is national or sectarian interest.
It seems if you take away religion, politics is the only sure way of making it big without much sweat, so people have become very aggressive towards their political opponents and the evidence is available on the airwaves and in the newspapers.
We do not have a common ground where, as a people, we can congregate and tackle development challenges with one voice and oneness of purpose. This is an election year and we are praying that this country remains united after December 7, 2012.
These and other considerations are making our compatriots skeptical about the fruits of independence and would, therefore, want their children to be left alone and not to be drawn into a celebration which does not have any meaning for them.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordorblogspot.com
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