GHS-DG Exposes GMA Lie on Medical Drones

I perfectly agree with the leaders of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) that much more needs to be done by the Government to significantly improve the quality of healthcare delivery in the country. But, of course, I vehemently disagree with the GMA leaders that such significant improvements as are needed to enhance healthcare delivery in the country cannot be done simultaneously and alongside with the hi-tech use of medical-supply drones of the kind initialed in the recent agreement between the company called Zipline Ghana Limited and the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “Bawumia Briefed GMA on Drone Project in November – GHS Replies Doctors” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/12/18). The initial four-year agreement is estimated to cost some $ 12 Million.

According to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, on November 6^th of this year, during the 60^th Annual Conference of the GMA, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia took at least 20 minutes of the plenary session of conference time to explain the medical drone-delivery agreement signed between Zipline Ghana Limited and the Government. Of course, it cannot be gainsaid that merely lecturing the members of the GMA about the Zipline compact with the Akufo-Addo government did not in of itself constitute the initiation of broad consultations with these first-responders on this auspicious and progressively proposed cutting-edge enhancement of the way that healthcare delivery is done in the country. Dr. Nsiah-Asare perfectly appreciates this fact, which is why even in seeking to correct the erroneous impression given the general public by the GMA leadership, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service also promised that his branch of the government would shortly open up broad consultations with all stakeholders of healthcare delivery vis-à-vis the use of drones in the delivery of blood and other emergency medical supplies by the Ministry of Health (MOH).

It cannot be gainsaid that unless healthcare delivery in the country is significantly improved or upgraded in the country, the use of drones in the proposed enhancement of healthcare delivery in the country will not amount to much. But what is even more important is for the leaders of the Ghana Medical Association to draft a comprehensive and strategic plan of what needs to be done by the present Government in order to bring the quality of healthcare delivery in the country to par with what prevails in the most industrially advanced countries in the world, or at least to par with what prevails in the most progressive and technologically advanced Third-World countries. Merely complaining about what the leaders of the GMA perceive to be a misplacement of policy priorities would not do. The development of qualitative healthcare delivery in the country is a two-way street. It is long overdue for the leadership of the GMA to continue to be morbidly fixated on the salary increments and other conditions of service of its membership, while scandalously neglecting to take into integral account the fact that the environmental and technological resource conditions under which they professionally conduct their business are equally important.

Finally, with the salutary waking up of our primary healthcare providers and foremost leaders in the healthcare delivery industry in the country, Ghanaians and our leaders may be getting somewhere. Kudos to both the leadership of the Ghana Medical Association, the Ghana Health Service, the Ministry of Health and the very progressive and constructive Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 16, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]