Could Ghana Really Boast of the Best Equipped Hospital in Africa?

Had the John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama-led government of the “Cash-and-Carry” National Democratic Congress (NDC) not been cavalierly and nonchalantly running the country on sheer propaganda spiel, the tragic death of the Emergency-Room Physician, Dr. Kwame Adu Ofori, at the Komfo Anokye Hospital (KATH), the nation’s second-largest civilian hospital, in Kumasi, the Asante Regional Capital, would not have so tragically and senselessly occurred over the weekend (See “KATH Doctor Dies Over Lack of Laboratory for Treating ‘Heart Attacks’” Otecfmghana.com /Ghanaweb.com 7/8/25).

About 10 years ago, one of the finest locally trained physicians in the country, who also happens to have been Yours Truly’s senior at St. Peter’s Secondary School - PERSCO - Okwawu-Nkwatia, presently renamed St. Peter’s Senior High School, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, appointed by former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as Director-General of Ghana Medical Services and, subsequently, Presidential Advisor on Health, was summarily dismissed from his then post as Chief Administrator of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital on purely political grounds of not being a card-carrying bona fide member and operative of the then newly elected Mahama-led 1.0 government of the National Democratic Congress.

Dr. Nsiah Asare would shortly take his case to court on grounds of a politically motivated dismissal and win his lawsuit bigtime, as New Yorkers hereabouts are wont to say, although the monetary value of the fine and compensation awarded the plaintiff was far more symbolic and literally a slap on the wrist of the infamous National Health Insurance Scheme-wrecking Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region.

Under the two-term consecutively elected previous Akufo-Addo Administration, Dr. Nsiah Asare would supervise the completion of the construction of the Maternity Ward of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, named by Mrs. Akufo-Addo after the late mother of His Majesty, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, with funding largely solicited by Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo (nee Griffiths-Randolph), Ghana’s immediate-past First Lady. Today, the KATH Maternity Ward, which had originally been started by the Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-slain Gen. Ignatius (Kwasi) Kutu Acheampong and completely abandoned by both the Rawlings-led juntas of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), as well as, of course, the Rawlings-led faux-civilianized institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress, for more than 40 years.

The latter yeomanly achievements, that is, including the $2-billion-plus (USD) that a newly elected President Akufo-Addo invested to resuscitate the Mahama-bankrupted John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), unarguably testifies to the yeomanly achievements of the putative Archbishop of Akyem-Abomosu and Kyebi in the crucial sector of healthcare development in the country. Recently, a pathologically profligate President Mahama hosted a banquet - in absentia - for some senior citizens, largely males, and some retired National Security Operatives and in a characteristically propagandistic fashion, announced the implementation of some nondescript quality-of-life medical insurance and monetary assistance packages strikingly reminiscent of the former President Agyekum-Kufuor-implemented LEAP - or Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty - Initiative.

The aforesaid banquet was held in the Agyekum-Kufuor-constructed and the Indian Government-financed Jubilee House, which one of the attendees who is also a regular columnist on the Modern Ghana Media Portal and several other local Ghanaian media portals insisted on calling the Flagstaff House, obviously in a nose-thumbing disregard for the true and real builder of the Akan stool-shaped architecture of Ghana’s Presidential Palace. Now, one does not really know just what to seriously make of the foregoing Mahama vaunt, in view of the fact of the highly avoidable Myocardial Infarction death of Dr. Kwame Adu Ofori of the Emergency Medical Ward or Department of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital this past weekend.

As usual, as has been the characteristic sloppiness of the dietary fare of the bulk of Ghanaian Journalism, the age of the late Dr. Kwame Adu Ofori was not given. Not that it would have really prevented this evidently hardworking physician from so tragically and needlessly losing his life. We are also significantly informed that this “Emergency Room Savior” of dozens of lives, by all the media accounts, could not himself be saved because the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital lacks a Catheterization Laboratory or Cardiothoracic Center like the one constructed by Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, the renowned pioneering Ghanaian Heart Surgeon, reportedly, with his own personally and privately acquired foundation grants, at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Ghana’s oldest and foremost comprehensive civilian or Public Health Center.

Ironically and predictably, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng would be summarily fired from the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital as Head of the Cardiothoracic Center by the late President John Evans “Atta-Woyome” Mills-led government of the then newly elected National Democratic Congress, because the Founder of Korle-Bu’s Cardiothoracic Center was not a bona fide card-carrying member of the latter political party. That is the kind of Ghana of “The Winner-Takes-All” political culture in which we presently live and about which Ghana’s lone Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization (UN) perennially and incessantly lamented as a major stumbling block to the salutary and the rapid development of Fourth-Republican Ghana.

Now, isn’t it an unpardonable shame that in a country in which nearly every major physician is literally a multimillionaire, there is only one international-grade Cardiology Center or Department catering to the needs of some 40-million people? About all that somebody like Yours Truly with a cardio-congenital condition can say is: “But for the ineffable generosity of Divine Providence, there goes I,” as many a New York City resident is wont to say.

Just last week, My Dear Cousin and recent retiree educator, Mrs. Phyllis Afua Brako-Offei, of the Cape Coast-Anomabu littoral, who has been taking care of her husband of 80-something years old and suffering from acute dementia, sent me a Tik-Toc rundown of the 10 Best Equipped and Service-Oriented Hospitals on the African Continent, on which Ghana’s Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital was ranked NUMERO UNO, ahead of Arab Military Republic of Egypt and South Africa, where Ghana’s President Mahama and the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian leaders and politicians regularly fly on Medical Tourism. No wonder that I laughed so hard and virulently that I almost suffered a heart attack. “My Dear Sister, You Can Believe All You Want About This Ananse Poppycock. Trust Me, I Am Not Buying It. Not Even For One Pesewa.” I emailed her back, to which she almost immediately briefly and interjectively responded: “Asem Sebe!”

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]