Kwadwo Baah-Weredu’s death is looming large over Ghana. A shocker! A caller to a radio talk show aptly described it as Ghana’s equivalence of the death of Princess Diana! Ghana is in mourning.
Baah-Weredu died young, at the peak of his game – and productivity. He was loved across the political divide. He was unspoilt, with an innate ability to behave so ordinary, as if the word pompous was non-existent in his consciousness. Some lesser ministers, politicians and leaders in various fields of endeavour are thickly cloaked in pomposity, making it difficult to relate with them. The pomposity of such characters smells to the highest heavens, causing God to sneeze. (Dear God, please help me to control my itch to name here, some of these overly pompous individuals. Amen!)
Like many Ghanaians, I’m mourning too. With his death, my mortality seems closer now than ever. I suspect that I’m not the only person in Ghana who is feeling this eerie way. When is it my and your turn?
Death is a given; death is a robber. To live is to die. In this society, death is also a flourishing industry, headquartered in Kumasi. So it is that a fluffy-red-carpet funeral roll-out is currently underway. Politicians, economists, traditional leaders, the clergy, and everyone with a name, are pouring out comments about beloved Baah-Weredu. What a loss!
But we shouldn’t aggravate the loss by losing the lessons. There are three things that must be said but are not being said regarding this painful national loss – the matters arising. These are: Ghana’s low life expectancy, disease stigma, and the deplorable state of our health care delivery system.
The first and probably the saddest, frightening and most worrying is that Baah-Weredu died at Ghana’s average life expectancy – age 56. Yes, 56 is the new 70! Fifty six is now really old because life expectancy in Ghana has been decreasing steadily. A 2005 source ranks Ghana 149 in the world, placing only better than 39 African countries – and Afghanistan, Laos and Haiti. That is bad company indeed!
So as we mourn Baah-Weredu, we should pause to mourn ourselves. And while we may be feeling terrified down this increasingly slippery slope into early graves, we must put pressure on our leaders to do whatever it takes to improve our health care delivery system which is a vast hell hole of a death trap.
The second unsaid matter arising is the secrecy surrounding the cause of Baah-Weredu’s death. Lay the nonsensical superstitions to rest; let’s talk medical. The usual stigma about diseases should not be allowed to play out fully to cheat us of an opportunity to learn useful health lessons from his death. What was the health condition for which he travelled to South Africa, accompanied by his ‘personal physician’ Dr. Nyantakyi, and for which a surgical procedure was performed? You might be thinking – it’s none of my business. But, it is!
Unconfirmed reports have it that he died of prostate cancer. Why the hush-hush about the diseases which kill us? If we feel shy to talk openly about prostate cancer because it is located in the scrotum region of men, then we are a national joke with regard to HIV/AIDS which is cloaked in perceptions of sex.
Again, death is a given; to live is to die. But we seem to have difficulty accepting death as a natural part of living. We are therefore too quick to accuse others of people’s death. We parade speculations as fact without blinking. Well-educated and supposedly intelligent people join in these speculations under the guise of super Christian pretentiousness, oblivious to the contradictions.
We must transcend whatever in our culture leads us to be secretive about the cause of death. The diseases by which our privileged, beloved sons and daughters die of could be used for constructive changes in our national disease dialogue and management. The word disease is coined from two words – dis and ease (e.g. dis-respect). A disease therefore is something that takes away your ease, comfort and by extension, joy. When you are ‘eased’ out, you die. It is therefore helpful if you know what is eating away at your ease and to cause you to ‘disease.’
The third matter arising from Baah-Weredu’s death is the grim state of the health care delivery system of fifty-one year old Ghana. It puts us all at risk of being knocked dead for even the most casual of diseases. Our hospitals are veritable death traps waiting with gaping mouths ready to suck in the unsuspecting, the uninitiated. Undoubtedly, since our leaders don’t trust our hospitals, they fly away as medical tourists to places like South Africa out of desperation to save their lives. But no matter how fast they run, they can’t hide from death.
Let’s therefore level the playing fields, no – the living fields, by improving our health care system. It is getting tiring to hear that the privileged of our land travel abroad for medical care. So what happens to Akwasi Opia, a farmer of Kokrobite or wife Evelyn Adobea, a school teacher? They will die early deaths because they can never go to South Africa for life-saving surgeries.
Meanwhile, Ghana has what it takes to become the medical nirvana in this region. Consider the medical ‘brain drain’ this country has endured for decades. My grand-daughter was delivered by a Ghanaian doctor in the USA. Two of the half a dozen or so nurses in attendance were Ghanaians! These are medical professionals trained with our meagre national resources who provide world-class services to the developed world. With such top class human resources, if a government sets its eyes on adequately equipping this country’s medical facilities to make us a medical tourism attraction, the tourists will come with their diseases and pay good money to be treated. And we, the locals, will have access too.
We can bring South Africa to Ghana! Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, Turkey, Philippines, Thailand and our continental neighbour – South Africa, where our beloved Baah-Weredu sought for medical treatment, are popular destinations for medical tourists. People from developed countries, head to these destinations to receive quality medical care at much lower costs than at home.
Aljazeera quotes Deloitte LLP, an international consulting firm, as estimating that 750,000 Americans sought for medical treatment abroad in 2007 alone. It is projected that the number could rise to as high as six million by 2010. Ghana could potentially make more money from medical tourism than from the crude oil we are currently drooling over.
If however, our medical system would remain at such deplorable levels, then we might as well provide golden parachutes, oiled lavishly in Cape Three Points sweet crude oil, to ferry every sick Ghanaian to South Africa (accompanied by personal physicians), and maybe, just maybe, die while receiving treatment. Afterwards, we would organize grand funerals to send them off into God’s cushy bosom.
FOOTNOTE: Mrs Margaret Baah-Weredu should step up in mourning clothes to contest her husband’s vacant seat. She will win – to carry on his legacy. This will stop the political vultures scurrying for the seat very cold in their tracks. And by that, increase the number of women in Parliament – by one!
233-8286817; dorisdartey@yahoo.com
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