Never waste a good tragedy
He was involved in a drunken brawl in a pub in London and was dead bent on having his way. In the process, he tripped and hit his head against an object and fell down unconscious. Within two minutes of a phone call, an ambulance arrived and the paramedics came hurtling out, with the ambulance barely screeching to a halt.
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Within an hour, he was on a theatre table after a scan had shown blood around his brain. He was saved. He was careless and one may argue that he got what he deserved but the fact remains that the system was well prepared for everybody in every situation, irrespective of time, location and social class and even people's foolhardiness.
The situation is totally different in Ghana. One is fortunate to be transported into the hospital in an ambulance. I have had my fair share of frustrations trying to get an ambulance to transport a child for a life-saving procedure. Some hospitals forbid their ambulances to transport patients under their care in the hospital to even across the street for life-saving investigation for reasons unfathomable.
The usual story, though, is patients holding on to their lives by the finest of threads, transported in taxis, pickups, trotros and private cars, when fortunate enough. Most of these patients never make it to the hospital, popularly referred to as BID's- "brought in dead." Most actually die en route to the hospital from lack of oxygen, manhandling in the process and, oftentimes, poor positioning in the seats of cars. I have witnessed the possibly worst degradation of a fellow human being who was transported in the boot of a taxi in his most vulnerable moment.
Emergency response
Interestingly, this is a stark contradistinction to the hearses in Ghana. Sadly though, more attention is paid to hearses than ambulances. Most hearses are well maintained and furnished more than our ambulances, perhaps highlighting where our priority lies — after all, don't we cherish the dead?
Again, we have lost another high profile personality in circumstances that cast grave judgement on our health system, particularly our emergency preparedness and response unit. “Never let a ‘good’ tragedy go waste,” Sir Al Aynsley-Green once said. Hope this time this will be indelibly written on our minds so we don't let go this glorious opportunity to revamp our health system.
By politicising the circumstances leading to the unfortunate passing of our former president, we missed the opportunity to unravel and improve the emergency aspects of our health system. As a result, the status quo remained in our emergency response system where people continue to be transported in taxis, as demonstrated in the case of Mr P. V. Obeng.
As usual, our ill-informed, mediocre media are clearly not interested in throwing the spotlight on what needs to be done differently. Concentration is on what he did or did not and what pictures were published but the whys and, the most important of all, what could have been done to prevent his demise, have been relegated to the background. A vibrant media will ask questions and timely ones, after all, isn't it true that time erodes memory more quickly than it does to beauty? In Ghana, the sad reality is that after a week or so, this topic will disappear into total oblivion with no lessons learnt.
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Safeguarding
One baby died in UK after authorities failed to protect her and as a result, the theme of Paediatric practice in UK now is "safeguarding"- mainly geared at curbing child abuse in whatever form. This change was spearheaded by civil society as a result of the media’s questions.
In Ghana, the focus is so much on politics that health is no more a right but a privilege. Politicians get away with making promises that they have no intention of coming even a mile close to fulfilling and yet are re-elected on the basis of the same promise. The National Health Insurance Scheme which should be for all of us has been hugely politicised. The politician, tasked with the management of our funds, has no limitation so far as spending on his health is concerned. Huge sums of money which can make meaningful contribution to our health system is spent on trivial things as medical checks for themselves, while the taxpayer continues to join the never-ending queues with the most complex of medical cases in our "cemeterised" hospitals.
Now if politicians everywhere are the same, then how come systems elsewhere are working, ensuring that no one is above the law? How come ambulances, well-equipped hospitals and well-trained personnel are available even to the commonest of the commons? It is because civil society is up and doing with regards to ensuring accountability to the people in these societies.
I don't believe that Africans cannot manage their problems, neither do I believe that the situation is beyond salvage for us to throw our hands up in despair. With proper accountability, we should be able to make quality healthcare accessible to all, including the “lowliest” of Ghanaians.
Two years ago, it was the demise of a former president. Today, it is P.V. Obeng and because they are high-profile personalities they get to be highlighted. The reality, though, is that there are numerous preventable deaths that occur daily in our homes and hospitals. Deaths that never get publicised by the media because they are "ordinary" people. On a daily basis, sick people in need of medical attention get tossed from one hospital to another because of a so-called "no-bed syndrome."
Golden minutes
During heart attacks and other medical emergencies, the earliest the intervention — so-called golden minutes — the better the survival probability. It is possible to intervene medically if we have well-equipped, well-trained paramedics manning our ambulances. The same holds for well-trained, equipped and motivated staff at our hospitals. What is the point in spending countless hours and energy resuscitating someone if there will be no bed, defibrillator, emergency drugs or ventilators in the hospitals to consolidate the efforts?
This defeatist notion of “we don't have the money to establish these systems or we need to seek donor funds” should stop! We have simply not prioritised our health. Doubling political appointments for themselves make news in the media daily, while there is a freeze on the appointment of health workers whose ratio is far from reasonable much less ideal.