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Government Has Faulted, But Doctors Must Be Patriotic!

Feature Article Government Has Faulted, But Doctors Must Be Patriotic!
AUG 4, 2015 LISTEN

I read with deep sadness that three patients have died because they did not have access to the service of doctors, and others have been asked to proceed to private hospitals for medication. Are we patriotic at all as Ghanaians? We are becoming overly materialistic and less patriotic. What at all is happening? There is no doubt that government has faulted and showed a sense of negligence.

Corruption is choking the prospects of the nation. The allowances and per diems of government officials if well managed could salvage the country from the wheels of progressive retrogression. Ghana is lagging behind and saddled with multiple challenges because government has consistently failed to live up to the task. The edey bee keke mantra has shown to be an illusive political rhetoric.

So yes, government cannot be left off the hook when we analyze the challenges confronting the country, but we, as Ghanaians, also have a task. We have a mandate to be patriotic. I know that we need money to survive, but the joy of life is saving life, and preventing life from running into extinction. Our doctors, nurses, and pharmacists etc, are trained principally to save life. So, for some of us who grew up in Zongo communities in Ghana, our fathers told us that doctors and nurses are next to God.

Because they are the professionals mandated to rescue life from destruction. In my own understanding, God is the source of life, and doctors and nurses are the maintainers of it.

That is why the immediate and core mandate of health professionals is not to accumulate wealth, but rather save life. When doctors are swearing the Hippocratic Oath (or what should have been Imhotep’s Oath from the Afrocentric perspective), they do not say they are entering the world of work to make money. Doctors swear their oath to save lives. So it is about time they lived up to that obligation, which the oath brings to bear on them.

We have all at a point sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to ensure that others benefit. From 2010 to 2012, I worked as a Community Teaching Assistant, under the then National Youth and Employment Programme, at the Kanda Estate ‘2’ Primary school, and for most of the months, the government could not pay me. I deliberately decided to teach there not because I had money and had no need for it. In fact, I agreed to teach there when I was writing my Master of Philosophy dissertation and needed more money. For most of the months, government could not pay me, but I was unperturbed by that because my primary purpose of teaching was not to make money, but to contribute to grooming the next generation of Ghanaian leaders.

I taught with all enthusiasm at Kanda, and a poem I wrote for the pupils to perform emerged the best poem for a contest and won an award for the Kanda cluster of schools. As young as I am, I have taught at all the levels of education: from Kindergarten to the University. And what motivates me to teach was not money; it was the quest to contribute to making the world better for all of us.

In the early 90s when I was a pupil at Kotobabi Presbyterian Primary School, we learnt a lot of patriotic songs, and so as pupils we were charged and fired to contribute to Ghana’s progressive. We also learnt to recite patriotic poems that inspired us to be good citizens and sacrifice for the betterment of Mother Ghana. When I started teaching at the primary school just when I had finished senior high school in 2001, I made sure I carried on the patriotic poems and songs I had learnt to my pupils, and they really enjoyed them. As a student of history, I made sure my pupils learnt the history of Ghana, focusing on the forefathers and mothers of the country. Today, am proud that some of the pupils I thought in primary school have completed university and are in the world of work contributing to the progress of Ghana.

Our health workers must know that they are no better than anyone. They are trained to save life, and they must live by that. Yes, government has failed to pay them for months and sometimes running into years, but what about life? Do we sacrifice human life at the expense of money? To reframe the biblical injunction: what shall it profit health workers when patients die because they (health workers) are not paid? It is an obvious truth that Ghana is in crises: things are falling apart, but this is also the time for us to show that we love Ghana. Our true identity as Ghanaians must be clearly seen in this time of difficulties. Money is good, but it is not the fountainhead of life. Work has a purpose: the purpose of work is not to amass wealth, but to contribute to making life better for humanity.

Peter Drucker, a respected management guru, once said that work is a service, which is not worthy any price but a reward for the work well done. We, therefore, work to serve NOT to earn. This is because of the simple logic that there is no price worthy of a work well done. It is for this logic that explains why all service providers are paid at the end of the month, not at the beginning. People should, therefore, work without expecting any pay, but a reward. A work well done will surely demand a reward! Doctors should, therefore, know that, like all other workers, they are paid not because they must be paid, but because they have provided service.

A colleague of mine, Balunywa Mahiri, also argues that weak institution emphasizes money at the expense of service. Strong institutions, like the Ghana Health Services, should, therefore, put service first, and money second. In the same vein, incompetent employees hide behind weak institutions to perpetuate ignorance, mediocrity, corruption, and greed, and eventually lead to the collapse of such institutions. Competent employees put service first, and money second. Doctors and nurses, live up to expectation. Show your mettle by working hard even with no or less pay (idealistic right?).

Ghana is at a crossroad, and we are all called upon to sacrifice to contribute to its growth and progress. We all complain that Ghana, after more than fifty years of independence, is still crawling, and yet most of us are so incompetent that we are prepared to sacrifice lives at the expense of money. It is this kind of attitudes that will bring the likes of Barrack Obama, a representative of America, a country that has no permanent friend, but permanent interest, to lecture African leaders. Africa arise! Ghana arise! We need patriotic workers.

Ghana, then Gold Coast, during the colonial period saw individuals and groups who put their lives on the line to wean Ghana from the clutches of colonialism. Today, we are enjoying because others had to sacrifice for us to live. It is time for us to also sacrifice for others to live. We cannot sacrifice the future to satisfy present needs. We need to be futuristic even as we satisfy today’s needs. The Dumsor challenge, which has become an albatross around the necks of Ghanaians, is a clarion call for Ghanaians to come together to find a solution to it. It is a call for unity. We should not only be united when Ghana performs well in sports, we should be united when the country is in crises. This is not the time to show partisan interest: this is the time to progress as a united people.

If we are motivated by money, we will not go far as individuals. Money is good, but it is not the solution to everything. For me as a Christian, my faith inspires me a lot to sacrifice for the interest of others. I have learnt to serve humanity, because my Lord Jesus Christ was the chief of all servants, and yet He was God of very god and Lord of very lord. Ghana must move, and we can move when we are all committed to the course of the nation. Ghana will not see the light of progress if those at the frontline of saving life gamble with life because of money. Ghana will not develop if those at the helms of administration squander the country’s resource to satisfy their parochial interest. The development of countries in the West and East Asia came at a cost. These countries emerged because their leaders were forward looking, and patriotic. They sacrificed for their present glory.

We are told and rightly so that, ‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.’ Our health workers have misfired, because it is not the corrupt government officials who are going to suffer the consequences of their strike, it is the poor Ghanaian who cannot afford to pay for a private doctor’s service. It is the old man and woman, who cultivate food under the torture of the sun for all of us to consume, who suffers. It is the Kayayoo, who is going to suffer for government’s ineptitudes. It is the poor taxi and trotro driver, who are going to die.

Please doctors, let me charge you into action with a quotation from the bible, the all time bestseller, “A good name is to be chosen rather than riches, and favour is better than silver or gold” (Proverbs 22:1). If you are a Christian or Muslim, or a devotee of African Traditional Religion, you know that the Ultimate Reality counts on you to make life better.

Finally, this is a proverb I learnt from Prof. Kofi Asare Opoku, a great Africanist, ‘A borrowed water cannot quench thirst.’ Government may be compelled to bring in Cuban doctors, but life will be better when preserved by Ghanaian doctors, since they (Ghanaian doctors) are very much familiar with Ghanaian and tropical diseases. Ghana must go, and all of us must contribute our quota even if it means sacrificing our interest.

The only disadvantage to the politicians is that they would lose election if they don’t rig, but the ones who are disadvantaged by the strikes of health workers are the subalterns.

A word to a wise is enough!

Satyagraha!!!

Charles Prempeh ( [email protected] ), Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Uganda.

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