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12.01.2011 Feature Article

Health and Tourism

The Author, Dr. Kofi Dankyi Beeko, MD.The Author, Dr. Kofi Dankyi Beeko, MD.
12.01.2011 LISTEN

I had been conceptualising for almost one year, drafting ideas, and canceling them again, on the old Toshiba machine which has so loyally served me for almost a decade. I tuned in to Kwadjo Oppong Nkrumah's 'Super-morning Show', Luv FM, on the 7th of December, 2010. He and the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Mr. Kobby Acheampong, were absolutely enthralled on the topic.

I re-arranged my program for the morning, so as to get along with them, as a listener. Tourism was once something near to an anathema decades back.

At the time, intellectuals in our Republic were convinced that, 'Tourism would destroy our environment.' A lot of that group, now with grandchildren, still do stick to that. 'Tourism destroys the environment'.

Perhaps, the statement, as it stands, only needs to be modified a little bit. 'Tourism might destroy the environment,' would fly better.  There was a lot of hue and cry from European intellectuals, who in the mid-seventies, would bask in the sun in Mombassa, and be escorted into the discothèques after sunset by the teenage tall African young ladies.  They paid lots less than if they had been to the Grand Canaries.

At the university campus, where many of them studied, or functioned as assistant lecturers, they would engage you in long, but seldom boring discussions, in which they would suggest African governments should take environmental issues seriously, because, the Dark Continent was seeing degradation of untold proportions. At the time, there was no European Union.

As this dialogue raged on, America had just lost the Vietnam War, during which hundreds of tonnes of napalm bombs were 'dumped' on an under-developed world, by a super-power.

But, things have changed. The West is 'chocked with money.'  This is the same money that must come to Africa to stop 'global warming,' the effect of which nobody is spared.

The United Nations supports groups which watch, not only Africa, but the entire third world. Tourism? Yes, indeed, except…!   job-creation, development, expansion of educational facilities.

Students would come in, and some may want to stay and share in the 'brain cultivation,' which every country has needed to develop, and that includes post World War II United-States of America. Tourism is good in as far as environmental factors are not thrown under the carpet.

The industrialised nations, examples being Germany and Japan, earn up to scores of billions of dollars and Euros, through tourism. In England, tourists, mostly from China and Japan, troop to the old colonial castles to satisfy their historical curiosity.

I was somewhat taken aback, when the Deputy Minister of Tourism talked of projects centered around the nation's capital, and two other places, all along the coast. A notion was thrown that 'Ghanaians don't like traveling to visit places.' Just following Hitler's war, Germans and other Europeans didn't travel to see anywhere until the effect of the 'Marshall Plan' became apparent.

Even so, Germans, in the late sixties and early seventies, would take the train from Hamburg in the North, to Constance, on the lake bearing the same name. At best, Sicily was a target when the traveler was possibly a chemistry professor working for Bayer, Leverkussen.

With the 'economic wonder' ushered in by Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, Germans started flying to Bangkok.

With minimum wages of around two dollars per day, getting into the kitchen to find out whether the kids could be fed is what everybody thinks of first and foremost, in most of Africa.

There is the Ananse tale in Ghana, which was originally narrated in Akan, seems to be known in a lot more tribes than the Akan. The tortoise crawls on all four limbs. Then came the invitation from the King of the animals, inviting them all for a big feast. There was one condition though, which just didn't favour the tortoise.

There was the stream a few metres away from the venue of the banquet. All animals had to wash their 'hands' before partaking in the banquet. So, the poor tortoise would 'walk' to the stream, wash his limbs meticulously.

By the time he would get back to the table, his limbs would be dirty, making it necessary for him to get back to the stream. So it went on, and on, and on.

There was once an international car-racing champion from Great Britain who refused to take part in any racing in a country which didn't have facilities to take care of the seriously head injured.

If he didn't take part, money didn't flow. Naturally, all the countries (most of them in Europe), had the required facilities.

Truly, there are many people from the developed world (and this refers to those with deep pockets), who would not visit countries which don't have adequate 'health care delivery lines.'

An eminent personality in the medical profession threw in a suggestion that the facilities, if they existed adequately, 'the finest of the fine Ghanaian practitioners now overseas would repatriate into them – an asset to the nation'. It was muted. That would seem right.

The government official threw in the always cooked answer, namely: 'Ghana has the Cardio-thoracic Center, which is the best in the sub-region.'

There is another fine health-delivery place in Sogakophe, the Deputy Minister supplemented. Ghanaians would do well to, not so often compare our nation's performance to those that are performing less that we are doing as a yard-stick.

In the country that was once called the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), you would hear the Germans those days talking of some aspect in the economy, and if America happened to be ahead, the Germans pledging to be there, where America was.

The Cardio-thoracic Center at Korle-Bu is a landmark achievement, and those directly, and even indirectly involved, deserve to be lauded.

Many people think that we should get to Malaysia and Singapore, where we may observe they are miles ahead. Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the 'Senior Statesman', after he had retired from office, received a by-pass surgery done under the roofs of a Singapore hospital, by Singaporean doctors.

In Singapore, private hospitals can assess bank-loans to raise their levels to match international standards. The situation has been different in our Republic, and seems to stay put. A bank official recently told me at a banquet, 'We have to charge high interest rates because, the default rate is so high.'

It seems nothing can be done about it. Well, there are citizens that feel we needn't be praising ourselves that much on a daily basis as a nation, when young men and women leave the universities and 'must roam about', sometimes, up to five years, before they might clock a job.

It seems tourism might be one good gate way. But, if so, let the tourists travel to the hinterlands; Ashanti, Brong (Bono) the North, the East, (Kwahu), these are also places in Ghana, I beg your pardon!

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