When The Nation Churns Out "Pasco Graduates"

The past fortnight has stricken panic and tension in our country necessitated by an unascertained endemic disease that has hit Kumasi Academy in the Ashanti Region. We have witnessed galloping spate of deaths with the lives of four students snuffed out by the unexplained illness. It brings the net deaths to 11 since this jinx visited its icy hands on the campus of Kumaca in March this year.

The crème de la crème of our medical experts have found it an extremely difficult to precisely proffer the illness and its cause let alone a panacea. The pathologists who performed the autopsy on the remains of the students stick out reports which is next next to a nonentity given the exigency of the situation. Test results from the Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research in the University of Ghana have ruled out meningitis as the cause of multiple death at Kumasi Academy but has no reliable discovery beyond disputing the theory that it is a meninges anomalies.

It is instructive to note that Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research is undoubtedly the country's best scientific research joint. We have now surrendered by extending a call to World Health Organisation to touch down in our country to confront the situation.

The shameful internationalised audition of our incapability to see through the mystery has brought once again our educational system and its products to the fore. I am not a pessimist nor a cynic but this very situation in Kumasi Academy has made me to interrogate further the aptitude of Pathologists, Medical Doctors, Engineers, Economist and host of others we fully train here in Ghana. Our Pathologists and Medical Doctors cannot find an antidote to a mysterious illness in a High School of 2000 students unless experts from WHO arrives. Our Engineers cannot build our roads, airports, skyscrapers and bridges unless the Chinese. Our Economist cannot manage our economy fully unless a structural adjustments programmes from IMF and World Bank. What is made of our educational system here then? When the Melcom Shopping Centre edifice at Achimota collapsed in November 2012, our locally trained disaster managers could not salvage the situation. The country had to hurriedly import Israeli rescuers and disaster managers to help safe lives which were trapped under the rubbles.

The country is doomed if our medical experts are nothing but imprisoned by the consulting rooms which simple google research can now help in the comfort of your room. They hold us to ransom for better conditions of service but cannot cart us away from medical urgencies.

In Ghana, your success at any exam is guaranteed when you read and answer pass questions. It does not inspire your thinking to excite people individual initiatives.

The educational system needs a revolution from a rigid 'Pasco System' to a system based on real personal imagination and propounded knowledge.

Abdallah Abdul Matin
Fellow Aspiring Pasco Graduate...