body-container-line-1
20.05.2012 Feature Article

YOU AND YOUR HEALTH

YOU AND YOUR HEALTH
20.05.2012 LISTEN

It will be the wish of each and every one of us to have a problem-free life; no debts, no disease, lot's money to spend, a wonderful family, etc. (Not necessarily in this order). However, it's not like this for most, if not for all of us. A very difficult problem we face, especially in our part of the world, is that of quality health care. Amongst the things that bother us the most are infections disease and non-communicable diseases (NCD). The earlier, largely controlled in most parts of the world, and the latter, the leading cause of death the world over. This article intends to throw some light on NCD's in our country and how we handle it.

NCD's are non-infectious diseases of long duration and generally of slow progression. They include heart disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, etc. I would want to say much about the losses these diseases cause us. In summary it includes, the death of someone's father, mother, etc., several days of absenteeism to school or to work, several million Ghana Cedis equivalent to lots of roads, health centers and classrooms seriously needed in our country.

The bigger problem is that, we us a country don't know how many of us have such conditions. The health statistics we have are based largely on the lucky few who can go to the hospitals. Most of our people don't have access to health centers. They don't go to see a doctor so we assume they don't get sick. How then can we say there is increases in Diabetes cases if we don't even know how many people have it?

The quality of life of PEOPLE with NCD's can be greatly improved if they're condition is diagnosed and treated early. In our country, we don't have a health system capable of doing that. Imagine the whole district descends on the few centers capable of doing blood glucose test to for that particle purpose? The Equipment are going to break down and the rest run out. Our health care system is oriented more towards treatment than prevention. Before a typical Ghanaian is diagnosed of Diabetes mellitus, he might have already developed one of the complications of the disease. And those who get diagnosed are the lucky few who have a health care provider near where they live. A large portion of GHANAINS don't have access to health care, but they say we are all EQUAL. These unfortunate folks end up dead, and get buried without ever getting to know the cause of death because pathologists are even scarcer than physicians.

In my opinion, I suggest we go into our communities where we are need the most, the hunt of disease and nip them in the bud. We need to include such in our National Strategies for Disease Management, and IMPLEMENT them. We can send a team with a mobile lab to a particular village 4 times a year to carry out blood glucose test for everyone. Then we can know who may be ill with Diabetes mellitus or not. Same can be done with High Blood Pressure. Or we can construct health centers for ever community with such capabilities as diagnosing NCD's amongst others. I can say there are people in our country who have never had their blood pressure taken before, yet we have the same rights and responsibilities as them.

Our brothers and sisters who have these conditions need to be frequently reviewed by health care professionals. That's another problem we have. Few health care professionals especially medical doctors. So what's the best way to solve this problem? Simply by training more. Some would say its expensive train doctors. Yes, it's expensive because we make it expensive. We can easily make it more affordable. We don't need to construct state-of-the-art facilities like it's done in the advanced world. We have our own problems and we need tailor-made solutions for them. We already have District and Regional hospitals capable of training doctors for us in our own COMMUNITIES, to serve the needs of those same communities or similar ones? Why don't we do it? It you're in doubt, ask our collaborators who work mostly in the hinterlands of our country, where they were trained in their country. The best we can do for ourselves is to train more doctors ourselves to solve our problems for us. When ill we wean ourselves off help, and help ourselves?

Andrew S. DZEBU
[email protected]

body-container-line