body-container-line-1

The President’s Address On Health And Education: My Opinion

Feature Article The Presidents Address On Health And Education: My Opinion
FEB 27, 2015 LISTEN

Before I do my comment on the major issues on health and education, let me do a quick one on Energy. The president was noted to have said that “perhaps, the impact of energy shortage is felt much greater today not only because of the growth of our economy, but also because many people have access to electricity than was the case in the past”. “Our (Ghanaians) electricity demand is growing at 10% per annum”, he added.

Do we have to blame Ghanaians for demanding electricity? As managers of this country, they were expected to have anticipated that our demand for electricity would definitely be on the increase, since we experience population growth but not population decrease in Ghana. Even the recent creation of the Power Ministry would go to scale up our power consumption. If His Excellency attributes one of the major causes of erratic power supply to the fact that many people have access to electricity than was the case in the past, I find it a bit difficult to reconcile that statement with the current rural electrification project, currently ongoing under the supervision of the President. How much has been injected into the rural electrification project? How much do we need as a country to curtail the current erratic power supply, known among households as dumsor? Wouldn't it have been a good judgment to rather channel efforts and resources allotted to the rural electrification project into ensuring we have stable power supply, have enough megawatts to meet the demands of those who have access to electricity now, before expanding access?

My fellow citizens, including my parents in the rural areas who are currently benefiting from the erection of electricity poles may vehemently disagree with me on my opinion. However, it's a hard fact: isn't it a poor judgment to seeing industries and business organizations which are the bedrocks of our economy collapse due to inadequate power generation capacity, and still embark on massive electricity expansion and access? Let us find sustainable means of generating more, ensure stable power supply, and then we can expand.

For me, if the current expansion is not politically driven, and a short-term measure to retain political power in 2016, the rural electrification project should be halted – channel the huge budget allotted to that project into solving the current power generation deficit we are battling with.

That notwithstanding, I am highly impressed bout the President's intent to transforming Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) into a customer responsive and profitable institution. This intended transformation is good news to customers, because customer service and responsiveness on the part of ECG as an institution has been thrown to the dogs for far long. Another impressive and proactive statement made by him (His Excellency) was also his intent to adding one thousand (1000) emergency megawatts of power to curtail the current power shortage, in collaboration with his sector minister.

On the President's Quality Education, he made mention of provision of sandals, uniforms, 15 million exercise books, 6 million text books and 30,000 additional computers for students. As if His Excellency's quality education was not define enough, he was happy to have stated that is a great achievement as a part of quality education, has for the first time institutionalize re-sit examination for Junior High School pupils. He was proud to have mentioned that about 1,800 students sat for the maiden edition this year. It's a good thing to give pupils the second chance to write their exams if they don't perform well in their first exams. However, I think it must not be institutionalized and tagged as an indication of quality education. How I wished the President had told us out of the huge figure taking part in the maiden edition of the re-sit exams, how many were pupils who had come from the private schools and how many were coming from the public schools? If not zero for the private schools, negligible, I guess. If indeed there is quality education as being propagated, why then do we have such a huge figure sitting for the exams? There is nothing like quality education in our public schools, especially those in deprived communities in this country. Let us be serious, make deliberate effort and put measurable measures in place to arrest the current dwindling standard of education in Ghana, and stop playing cheap political games with it. How could you say there is quality education by mere provision of school sandals and uniforms when about 98% of community-based basic schools have no libraries? Where are the additional 30,000 and the 6 million text books purported to be provided by the President going to be kept? At the cubicles created for head teachers and their staff, I guess.

Let us fight the root cause of huge number of pupils failing their basic school final examination, rather than upholding the institutionalization of re-sit for these pupils.

And His Excellency did not disappoint me on the state of health. Prior to his address, I had said he was going to talk about construction of healthcare structures and the huge expenditure on curative health. In fact, that has been the routine for almost all governments of Ghana. The President did not deviate from the normal practice at all. He presented a fine list of health facilities across the country, and the numerous hospital beds that are being created to fill these healthcare structures. At a point, he sounded: beds, beds, beds… The question I am asking is that, what are we doing as a nation to prevent us from going to sleep on those beds being mentioned by His Excellency?

It was so disappointing to have ended his speech on health without telling Ghanaians the state of the nation on preventive medicine/health. Successive governments have all sidelined preventive health; meanwhile, it was the basis upon which our Primary Healthcare Concept was built. We seemed to have been practicing Primary Healthcare, but have relegated preventive healthcare to the ground. In fact, we cannot have comprehensive healthcare system that we are yearning for, without bringing preventive medicine onboard.

The over 3 billion Ghana cedis that were speculated to have been spent on the healthcare sector, in the President's address, what has been the percentage allocation to preventive health? The President was noted to have said that, “a good economy resides in the health of our people”, that is very true. On the other side, it's a bit conflicting if the same person and his government would rather focus too much attention on creating curative health facilities for their people, watch them fall sick and get treated; rather than being committed to creating preventive health awareness among his people to increase control over the preventable causes of diseases. My point is, it's cost effective to preventing people from going to utilize hospital beds rather than promoting the utilization of the beds – preventive health will do the magic of ensuring that the numerous beds at our health facilities are not utilized.

One would have thought the President would have mentioned and lamented over the cholera outbreak in the preceding year that claimed more than 500 lives. Creation of more hospitals and beds will not solve the annual ritual of cholera outbreaks, but preventive health.

What about the Millennium Development Goals? I least expected His Excellency John Dramaini Mahama to have presented a state of the nation's health, omitting Ghana's state on achieving the MDGs. All we heard was creation of hospitals, hospitals………. What is the big deal for that omission? This is the reason: 2015 is an important year, since it is the final evaluation point/year for the MDGs. He should have thrown light on where we are (in terms of e.g. maternal and child health, HIV/AIDs), and where we are going as a nation, as far as the MDGs are concern. I may have to pardon His Excellency for sidelining such an important aspect of the state of the nation's health, on grounds that almost all the eight (8) MDGs are preventive health oriented, and it' s a ground governments of Ghana find it difficult to travel.

A chunk of our national budget is spent on curative health annually, yet we are still recording a lot of morbidities and mortalities to preventable diseases and risky health behaviors. Let us all wake up, embrace and invest in preventive medicine/health, for it's only through that deliberate effort that we will be able to cut down on the huge annual budget on healthcare.

Author: Goblu Mawuli Samson
Email: [email protected]
+233 241115660

body-container-line