What Value Is Placed On The Life Of A Ghanaian?

Over the weekend, we read disturbing reports on www.3news.com  that medical staff at the Accident and Emergency Centre (A&E) of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra could not receive the patients because there were no beds  available at the at the A&E of the country’s leading hospital.

The report said though the patients were mostly accident victims in critical condition and had been rushed to the hospital because they were  in an urgent and immediate need of medical attention to save their lives, they were kept in ambulances for hours because there were not enough beds.

It is noteworthy to state that the facility in question, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, is the leading national referral centre in Ghana at the moment yet patients who arrived in ambulances from across the country with different trauma cases could not get beds at the A&E Centre, and had to stay in their respective ambulances for at least four hours, according to the news report.

It further reported on how chocked the A&E was, and the fact that one patient even died while receiving oxygen in a wheel chair.

If this is the sorry state of health care delivery at the country’s premium hospital situated in the capital city for that matter, one wonders how scary and worse, the situation that pertain in the hinterlands.

The ‘no bed’, anarchy is not new in Ghanaian hospitals and health centers. Over the years, it has remained a key medical and health delivery challenge that has not been adequately addressed by successive governments.

It becomes an issue of pretentious concern for only parties outside government. Once in political office,   the very persons  who trumpeted and echoed the ‘no bed’ wahala from their roof tops, start to pay lip service under the guise of addressing the challenge.

The situation brings to the table a critical question of what value of placed on the life of the Ghanaian?  It also makes one wonder how governments, past and present consider the  Value of Preventing a Fatality (VPF) and Implied Cost of Averting a Fatality (ICAF).

The lives of the hapless Ghanaian citizens trapped in the ambulances in queue  are as important as the lives of any Ghanaian living anywhere in the world.

The accident victims could have been any Ghanaian be it the President, the Priest, the Paramedic or the Police Officer.

The New Publisher reminds the current government of its campaign promise that  a New Patriotic Party (NPP) led government , under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, would resolve the nation’s health challenges based on seven principles, one of them being investing in the expansion of infrastructure.

The age old challenge of ‘no bed’ in Ghanaian hospitals can be rectified depending on the value an incumbent government decides to place on the life of the Ghanaian. It is about choices. It is about priorities.