This year’s World Prematurity Day 2025 theme, “Give Preterm Babies a Strong Start for a Hopeful Future,” calls on governments and health systems worldwide to invest in the structures that safeguard the long-term well-being of preterm infants.
This message is particularly urgent and timely for Ghana.
A “strong start” is impossible without the specialised therapists whose interventions shape the developmental, educational, and economic futures of children born too soon.
The theme, therefore, reinforces the government’s responsibility to retain and expand our rehabilitation workforce, not export it, because Ghanaian preemies also deserve the full gamut of care required for a hopeful future.
Premature birth is not a one-time medical event. It is a lifelong risk factor.
In early childhood, preemies face high rates of hearing loss, speech delay, feeding difficulties, motor delays, poor muscle tone, and sensory-processing issues. Without early identification and therapy, these delays become entrenched.
In school-age children and adolescents, the problems evolve: attention difficulties, executive functioning deficits, dyslexia, poor coordination, social communication challenges and emotional/behavioural difficulties. These directly affect academic achievement, school retention and psychosocial wellbeing.
In adulthood, preterm survivors are more likely to develop hypertension, cardiovascular disease, reduced lung function, mental health challenges, and lower economic productivity.
Many struggle with employability because developmental delays that were never addressed in childhood shape their adult outcomes.
Across every stage, the common thread is clear: without audiologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists and specialised nurses, these gaps widen and follow the child for life.
Ghana is currently training rehabilitation professionals at great cost.
Their conditions of service, however, risk the possibility of losing many of them to more lucrative markets abroad.
When a trained therapist leaves the country, Ghana loses immediate clinical capacity, where there will be fewer professionals for every preemie needing follow-up.
Ghana also risks the loss of experienced professionals to train new therapists locally. Families will be left to manage avoidable disabilities and difficulties alone.
In the end, Ghana stands at the losing end of the stick economically when the state trains, but other countries reap the benefits.
This is not merely brain drain; it is a drain on national health security.
Preterm survivors represent a growing population. When they do not receive early therapy services, the country ultimately pays more in special education support, chronic disease management, social welfare dependence and lost workforce productivity.
In economic terms, every GH₵1 invested in early intervention yields up to about GH¢20 in long-term savings and productivity. Exporting therapists, therefore, is not financially prudent. It is economically harmful.
Honour
To honour the 2025 theme and protect Ghana’s developmental future, the country must do everything within its means to retain rehabilitation professionals through better working conditions and competitive incentives.
Training programmes in audiology, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and clinical psychology should be expanded.
Multidisciplinary follow-up clinics with the necessary training equipment should be integrated into all regional and teaching hospitals. Newborn hearing screening and early neurodevelopmental assessments should be standardised nationwide.
The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) should consider taking up the costs of some of these assessments and therapies for preterm infants and other high-risk babies.
Beyond the hospital settings, community health workers and other interested parents can be trained to continue with rehabilitation efforts within the community.
If we continue losing our therapists to external markets, we create a generation of children who survive infancy only to struggle through school and adulthood without support. That is an economic loss we can no longer afford.
Preemies need fulfilled therapists here where they were born, where they are growing, and where their futures matter most.
Investing in therapists is not just a health priority; it is a nation-building strategy.
The writer is a child development expert/Fellow of the Zero-To-Three Academy, USA.
E-mail: nanaesi.gaisie@wellchildhaven.com
