Ghana's Silent Kidney Crisis: Northern Patients Travel Hundreds of Kilometres to Accra as Specialist Shortage Deepens

For a kidney patient in Walewale, in Ghana's North East Region, or in Tamale itself, chronic kidney failure does not just mean a diagnosis it means a journey.

With no nephrologist-led dialysis service within easy reach across much of the north, patients and their families are routinely forced onto buses and shared taxis for gruelling trips south, some of them stretching to Accra, in pursuit of a treatment that ought to be available closer to home.

This is the reality that has repeatedly pushed patient advocacy groups, including the Forum for Kidney Patients Association Ghana, to demand urgent government action on both infrastructure and specialist manpower.

A National Shortage With a Northern Face

Ghana's kidney care system is stretched thin at every level, but the strain is felt most acutely outside the two major southern cities. The country has only about 15 trained nephrologists in active practice, translating to a ratio of roughly 0.44 nephrologists per million people far below the average of 1.6 per million recorded across other low- and middle-income countries.

The shortage is so severe that an estimated 57.5 percent of the country's dialysis centres operate without any attending or locum nephrologist on site, leaving nurses, general physicians and medical officers to manage complex renal cases without specialist backup.

According to the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HeFRA), Ghana has just 14 licensed dialysis centres nationwide. Eight of them sit in the Greater Accra Region alone, with three more in Ashanti. The Northern, Eastern and Western Regions each have only one licensed facility, while half of Ghana's regions have no dialysis service whatsoever.

Private hemodialysis providers, meanwhile, exist only in Accra and Kumasi, effectively locking patients elsewhere out of paid alternatives when public capacity runs out.

The Long Road South
For patients drawn from the Upper West, Upper East, North East and Savannah Regions, the Tamale Teaching Hospital has long stood as the only dialysis lifeline for a vast stretch of the country's north and even that facility, like others, has periods without a resident nephrologist.

Before a new dialysis unit was commissioned in Wa this year, patients from those regions frequently had no choice but to travel onward to Tamale, Kumasi, or Accra for treatment, a reality that Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin acknowledged directly at the unit's commissioning, describing the costly journeys and emotional strain such patients had long endured, with some dying for lack of early access.

Walewale and the surrounding North East Region remain without a dialysis centre of their own, meaning patients there still depend on the nearest available service whether in Tamale or, when capacity is exhausted, in Accra itself. For someone requiring three sessions a week, as is medically recommended, an intercity round trip of this scale is not a one-off ordeal but a punishing routine that many cannot sustain financially or physically.

Patients' Advocates Sound the Alarm
The Forum for Kidney Patients Association Ghana has been among the loudest voices demanding redress. Its President, Baffour Kojo Ahenkorah, has repeatedly called on government, corporate bodies and benevolent individuals to intervene, warning that the rising incidence of kidney disease demands urgent action from all stakeholders.

Speaking during a donation of dialysis consumables to the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital the only public dialysis centre serving the entire Central Region and patients drawn in from Western, Eastern and Ashanti Regions besides Ahenkorah noted that the facility's five functioning machines were struggling to serve more than 100 patients.

The association has also flagged the scale of the problem at Ghana's largest referral centre. At Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, more than 400 kidney patients depend on roughly 30 dialysis machines, with only 20 reserved for patients under the National Health Insurance Authority's free dialysis programme.Patients on that programme have described arriving as early as 1:00am to secure a session that might not begin for hours, with machines running almost continuously from Sunday through Friday far beyond the recommended usage that allows for proper maintenance.

The Cost of Distance
Beyond geography, the financial burden compounds the crisis. The mean cost of a single dialysis session in Ghana has been estimated at roughly $54, with private facilities charging even more.

For patients earning around Ghana's monthly minimum wage, this is a staggering outlay before transportation, accommodation and lost income from travel are even factored in. The NHIS dialysis cover, while a welcome relief for enrolled patients, does not extend to the travel and logistical costs that come with living far from a functioning centre.

Signs of Incremental Progress
There have been modest gains. The Wa dialysis unit's GH¢4 million expansion is expected to ease pressure on patients from five regions who previously had nowhere closer to turn. In Tamale, the NGO Sankofa Medical Charities recently donated additional dialysis machines and recliners to Tamale Teaching Hospital, with plans reportedly under consideration to extend dialysis services to Yendi Government Hospital once idle machines there are serviced.

The Ghana Kidney Association, for its part, continues to push awareness through World Kidney Day activities and continuing medical education for non-specialist health workers who often carry the clinical burden in the absence of nephrologists.

What Patients and Advocates Are Demanding

The consistent message from patient groups is that Ghana needs both more trained nephrologists and a wider geographic spread of dialysis infrastructure not one without the other.

Advocacy voices have called for government to expand postgraduate nephrology training for doctors and nurses, deploy more technicians to district-level facilities, and establish additional dialysis centres so that patients in remote areas are not compelled to choose between forgoing treatment and undertaking journeys that many are simply too weak to make.

Until that expansion reaches the north in full, the road to Accra long, costly and often desperate will remain the default lifeline for kidney patients from Tamale, Walewale and the wider region.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,

International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. ( USIP)

Mustysallama@gmail.com
+233555275880

References
Kidney360 (Global Dialysis Perspective: Ghana) https://journals.lww.com/kidney360/fulltext/2023/12000/global_dialysis_perspective__ghana.18.aspx

PMC/NIH (Global Dialysis Perspective: Ghana) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10758517/

MyJoyOnlineMyJoyOnline (Ghana has only 14 registered dialysis centres HeFRA) https://www.myjoyonline.com/ghana-has-only-14-registered-dialysis-centres-hefra/

Renal Replacement Therapy / Springer Nature (The geographical distribution of dialysis services in Ghana) https://rrtjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41100-018-0143-1

Graphic Online (Bagbin commissions GH¢4m expanded dialysis unit in Wa) https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/ghana-news-bagbin-commissions-ghc4m-expanded-dialysis-unit-in-wa.html

ModernGhana (Kidney patients call for more dialysis machines at Cape Coast Teaching Hospital) https://www.modernghana.com/news/1518642/kidney-patients-call-for-more-dialysis-machines.amp

Ghana News Agency (Renal Patients urge Government to expand infrastructure and funding) https://gna.org.gh/2026/04/renal-patients-urge-government-to-expand-infrastructure-and-funding/

Kidney Health International (Over 90% of Ghanaian kidney failure patients who should receive dialysis are not getting it) https://kidneyhealthinternational.org/over-90-of-ghanaian-kidney-failure-patients-who-should-receive-dialysis-are-not-getting-it/

GBC Ghana Online (NGO donates dialysis machines and recliners to Tamale Teaching Hospital) https://www.gbcghanaonline.com/general/ngo-donates-dialysis-machines-and-recliners-to-tamale-teaching-hospital/2026/

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