Gesture of President’s family commendable

Access to health care by both the rich and the poor is constrained by the cost of care all over the world.

For the rich, they can afford health care within and without, but some form of health care is inaccessible to all, irrespective of a person’s financial background.

Even in the so-called market economy environment, there is some level of social health financing, so that the burden of care is reduced to the barest minimum. 

Indeed, some countries have found a way round health financing by introducing national health insurance schemes.

Until 2005, Ghanaians virtually paid for all forms of health care, except a few for which exemptions existed by national protocol or international conventions.

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is to help create the conditions that lead to improvement in healthcare delivery. It is also meant to improve coverage and access to high quality health care at affordable cost for the entire population. 

Prior to the introduction of the NHIS, media reportage had exposed the high prevalence of some life-threatening illnesses, such as hole-in-heart, among Ghanaian children.

Family members of many of our compatriots suffering from heart ailments had to rush to newspapers and the electronic media to make appeals for support to seek health care, mostly abroad, because facilities did not exist locally.

On a few occasions, Good Samaritans were identified to raise the needed resources for hole-in-heart care abroad. There were casualties, but children who survived these heart surgeries were celebrated.

Then, luckily, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng appeared on the horizon to establish the National Cardiothoracic Centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in the 1980s to offer treatment for heart ailments. 

A few well–meaning Ghanaians touched by the plight of patients established the Ghana Heart Foundation to raise the money to subsidise the cost of treatment of heart ailments.

The intervention did not help matters very much, as many children from poor backgrounds were still unable to afford care.

It is for this near hopeless situation for many hole-in-heart patients that the Daily Graphic commends the family of President John Mahama for donating GH¢300,000, being donations from the funeral of his mother, Hajia Abiba Nnaba, to the National Cardiothoracic Centre.

The support is to assist Ghanaians, especially children, who need to undergo surgery at the centre but cannot afford the cost involved.

The Director of the National Cardiothoracic Centre, Dr Lawrence Serebour, who was touched by the President’s gesture, stated that heart diseases among children “were a big  problem”.

“I can tell you that one in every 100 children born will suffer from a hole-in-heart condition. If you look at the population of Ghana, we have at least 7,000 children who are born with hole-in-heart conditions and half of them will not see their first birthday without intervention,” he said.

Mr President, the gesture by you and your family is once again your demonstration and care for the needy and vulnerable in society.

For this reason, and the fact that health financing has been dwindling, the Daily Graphic thanks the President for deciding to commit donations at his mother’s funeral to a good cause like the care for heart patients, especially children whose health will be at risk even for these correctable heart challenges.