Well, let me begin by saying that I am not a security expert; I am merely expressing my views as a Ghanaian who has observed the increasing rate at which health workers are attacked while carrying out their duties. From my perspective, these incidents are deeply concerning and deserve urgent attention to ensure the safety and protection of health professionals who serve the public under often challenging circumstances.
Healthcare facilities are meant to be places of healing, care, and trust. Yet. Across Ghana, hospitals increasingly contend with workplace violence, unauthorised access, theft of medicines and equipment, and emergency threats that disrupt the very environment meant to preserve life. Health workers have come under attack from patients and their relatives, while troubling reports of missing infants and dead bodies raise urgent questions about who is truly safeguarding our health institutions. The life of every health worker and every patient in-patient, out-patient, or deceased matters, and protecting that life requires more than goodwill. It requires a deliberate, professional security architecture.
Hospital security in Ghana remains one of the most underrated and under-resourced functions in the health sector. Too often, the role is reduced to directing vehicles into parking spaces in exchange for a token of appreciation, rather than performing the protective duties a modern hospital demands: managing entrances, de-escalating aggressive behaviour, safeguarding medical equipment and medicines, and responding swiftly to emergencies. Security personnel are typically among the lowest-paid members of the healthcare team, despite evidence that they are more likely than clinical staff to be injured on duty with many incidents occurring at night, when facilities are most vulnerable.
Verbal and physical aggression against staff, theft of medicines and equipment, trespassing, and threats to doctors and nurses are now regular occurrences. Under these pressures, and without adequate support, some guards are themselves at risk of burnout, substance misuse, and behavioural difficulties, even though they remain very much part of the broader healthcare workforce. If the state can station police at banks, courts, and alongside political officials, it is reasonable to ask why hospitals where the most vulnerable citizens lie do not receive comparable priority.
One practical way to close this gap is to merge hospital security with the National Ambulance Service into a single, formidable unit a Hospital Security and Emergency Services (HSES). Both functions exist to respond rapidly to crises in and around health facilities: one to threats of violence, theft, or unauthorised access, and the other to medical emergencies. In practice, these crises frequently overlap.
A violent altercation may produce injuries requiring immediate medical attention, and an ambulance crew responding to an emergency may need security support to manage a hostile scene. By bringing both functions under one command, personnel could receive rigorous, integrated training in both security protocols and emergency preparedness, ensuring that every officer on duty is equipped to handle whichever crisis arises first, at the barest minimum.
Such an amalgamation is not without precedent. Ghana has previously merged specialised state services to improve efficiency and coordination most notably the merger of the Internal Revenue Service and the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service to form the Ghana Revenue Authority. That experience shows that distinct institutional cultures can be successfully unified under a single administrative framework when the rationale is sound and the transition is well managed. A similar approach to hospital security and ambulance services would consolidate scarce resources, harmonise training standards, and create a clearer career structure for personnel who currently operate in relative isolation.
A merged Hospital Security and Emergency Services unit would offer several advantages. It would enable a faster, more coordinated response to incidents that combine security and medical dimensions. It would professionalise hospital security, improving training, pay, and morale, and reducing the behavioural and mental health pressures currently affecting poorly supported guards. It would establish consistent protocols across facilities nationwide, rather than the patchwork arrangements that exist today. And it would send a clear signal that the safety of patients, staff, and visitors and the dignity of the deceased is treated with the same seriousness as the security afforded to banks, courts, and state officials.
Hospitals should be sanctuaries, not sites of fear. Merging the National Ambulance Service with hospital security offers a practical, holistic pathway towards that goal one that draws on Ghana’s own experience of successful institutional mergers and responds directly to the realities health workers and patients face every day. Policymakers, health administrators, and security agencies should give this proposal serious consideration as part of a broader commitment to health safety and security for all.
Dorcas Inaka Abakli-Zakli
Senior Procurement Manager
Ghana College of Pharmacists
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