By Arthur Kobina Kennedy Protecting the health of the public is one of the cardinal responsibilities of every government. There is hardly anyone who will disagree with this statement. The question on my mind today as we celebrate our republic is whether indeed our government is doing an adequate job of protecting our health. Are we adequately protected on our roads? Are we well protected from the dangers of filth? Are our anti-pollution laws being enforced? Are the medicines imported into our country safe? These are only a few of the questions on my mind and I am sure that since you started reading this, you have thought of a few. In other columns, I have addressed road accidents and filth so I do not intend to address them today. Last week, I was listening to a very popular radio station when I heard a lady advertising some medication. She said that she and her husband had been cured of cancer and H.IV. by a traditional health professional they had visited after taking the medicine!!! Cured of H.I.V. and cancer? The lady went on to in effect claim that the practitioner she was talking about could cure virtually every disease. Shrewdly, she liberally sprinkled in the name of God. A day later, I was surfing T.V. channels when I saw on one of our channels, a white lady with a stethoscope. In halting English, she claimed that her facility had a machine that could, in effect diagnose virtually any disease under the sun. I have been a physician for a while but I have never heard of such a machine. I wondered whether this advert had set out to exploit the credibility most Ghanaians ascribe to whites in the peddling of obviously false claims. I have not travelled by private bus between Accra and Kumasi for some time but I am told that vendors still ply their wares in our buses and at lorry stations selling instant cures for everything from impotence to cancer. A few days ago, while trying to locate a friend’s office, I saw a large group of mostly young men and women gathered in front of a building. When I inquired, I was told that they were there to collect some Chinese medicines that they would retail to the public. A few weeks ago, I met a young man who had paid hundreds of Ghana cedis to one of the popular so-called “healing centers” and after six months had ended up in hospital with more problems than he started with. For a complaint of impotence and back-pain, he was charged 10 million old Ghana cedis with a deposit of 4 million old cedis. In the end, he ended up going to Korle-Bu where it was discovered that as a side-effect of the herbal medicine, he had developed kidney failure. Some caveats here. This is not an attempt to give the impression that all the medicines being sold through radio and other such means are bad or that traditional medicines are bad. I am aware that there are good herbal cures and that many medications that are now mainstays of western medicine were once herbs in remote places on earth. Indeed, I have seen some good adverts on diaper rush and contraceptives that are very well done and very commendable. On the other hand, one hears occasionally of things done in the name of western medicine that are unacceptable. The focus of this is to draw attention to how vulnerable the public is. Here are some facts that should keep you awake at night:

• According to authorities, of the nearly five hundred private clinics and hospitals in Accra, only about a hundred have the necessary clearances to operate. All the rest are operating in defiance of our laws and the authorities have no idea whether what they are doing meets the necessary standards or not. The board established to police private health facilities simply lacks the manpower and resources to supervise them.
• According to informed sources, nearly a quarter of the drugs we import into the country may be fake or substandard and the Standards Board and the Food and Drugs Board lack the staff and resources to do an adequate job of policing the importation of drugs. And by the way, next time you buy medicine from a pharmacy, check the expiration date because you may be buying expired medicine.
• Do you buy and drink sachet water in Ghana? Well I do sometimes too but each time you do so, pray because a lot of the establishments manufacturing “sachet water” are not licensed to operate.
• Do you like eating at chop bars? I do too but many of the places we eat do not operate according to any standards and are not supervised by anybody.

Now, do not get me wrong. I know we cannot police everything but these should be matters of public interest. When somebody takes herbs for whatever and is rushed to the hospital with renal failure or cardiac arrest or whatever the effects of delayed treatment are, we all pay for it somehow. When we cannot ensure that medications imported into the country meets quality standards, there are disturbing consequences. People buy the medicines in good faith to treat illnesses and may end up dying or suffering side effects. When we buy water in sachets on our streets to drink, we should have some reasonable assurance that the water is handled in a manner that meets minimal standards of safety. When we walk into a private clinic or hospital, we must be able to believe that our government has made sure that it meets certain standards of quality and safety. When we sit in chop bars and ask for “akrantie” and “aponkye”, we must be assured that these establishments are allowed to operate because our public health authorities have examined them and assured themselves that they meet certain standards. Do radio and T.V. stations not have a duty to ensure that their advertising meets certain standards of accuracy? I know that during the campaign, they sometimes refused to air adverts for parties and candidates that were considered too insulting or inflammatory. Why should the same attitude not apply to adverts on health? What can be done to improve protections for the public’s health? First, we must increase the personnel of organizations like the Food and Drugs Board as well as Standards Board and beef up the technical capacity of District Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies. Second, we must require our radio and T.V, stations to do some due diligence before accepting adverts from people or organizations for presentation to the public. While they are there to make profit, they must be guided by the public interest too. Indeed, it will be very helpful if our media houses found a way to put on air more credible sources of medical information. Third, we need a body here in this country dedicated to policing the quality of the care delivered to the public, by hospitals, clinics, herbalists and with the resources to enforce its decisions. Fourth, we must educate the public that not everything that is said on T.V. is true and encourage people to take some responsibility for their health. Fifth, public and consumer advocacy groups must take more interest in the health of the public and work to expose the charlatans who are preying on the public. I know what those in authority and their fifth columnists will say. They will claim that we have no resources. My answer is “Yes, we do.” We have enough resources to guarantee a 50 thousand Ghana cedi loan for each of our 230 MP’s for a car so we have resources. By the way, the money’s given to officials in advance are called PRE-GRATIA as compared to EX-GRATIA which is paid after service. We had enough money to build an extravagant Presidential Palace so we do have resources. Maybe we lack the will but the resources are there. I will believe that there are no resources when we cannot afford extravagant expenses that do not clearly benefit the public. On the question of whether the government is doing enough to protect the public, health, the answer is “no”. Let us move forward, together. Credit: Arthur Kobina Kennedy E-mail: arkoke@aol.com