Pharmacist, Dr. Kwame Sarpong Asiedu has counselled Ghanaian leaders and government officials not to deceive themselves into believing that they are not affected by the poor health system.

He explained that our leaders seem unbothered and take unthoughtful decisions regarding our health care system because they go for regular check-ups in other countries which they believe to be well designed and effective and trust that they will be given the best healthcare.

“I struggle when people tell me that our leaders are not subject to our health system, the truth is they are subject to our health system but they don’t know.”

“The truth of the matter is this, for management of their chronic ailment, they can go abroad and do it, we hear it every time, the Speaker is going here, the President is going there, and we hear it,” he said.

However, Dr. Asiedu who is also a Democracy and Development fellow for Health at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD Ghana) indicated that, our leaders seem to forget that they will still be subject to our health system in times of emergency.

Speaking on Joy FM, he mentioned some prominent leaders who resorted to Ghanaian healthcare system because they were vulnerable and had no choice out of which some unfortunately lost their lives.

“But that’s the reality, we were here when the President in an emergency like that was subject to the health system, we’ve seen a number of prominent statesmen not being able to be flown out, we’ve seen the Vice President, it is very naive if they think they are not subject to the health system,” he said.

Unfortunately, it is rather these emergency cases that are likely to snatch lives and not the routine checkups the leaders travel to have therefore he urged government officials and leaders to tackle and fix our bad health system and stop thinking they are not affected.

“The dangerous part for me, is that when they’re subject to the health system they are at their most vulnerable and that is even scary.”

“So it is even more important for them to fix the health system because they use other health systems that are thriving, that are well designed for their routine stuff but those health systems would not be available for them for their emergency stuff.”

“And most often than not it’s the emergencies that take you out not the routines,” he said.