Placing value in and unlocking value from Ghanaian Citizens Part II

Two weeks ago, I was summoned to Breman Asikuma, to attend the 9^th Speech and Prize Giving day of Ave Maria School. As I sat through the ceremony and watched the kids execute their choreographed moves, I wondered how many of the girls would end up as maids in the leafy suburbs of Asikuma and how many of the boys would end up hawking goods on the streets or in the markets of Accra.

Parents bring their children into the world with so much hope for their future but our system gradually erodes that hope and replaces it with a defeated acceptance of the fact that their children did not break through the glass ceiling that exists here in Ghana. And the irony of that simply cannot escape me. To think that in our own beloved Ghana, a glass ceiling exists for a disadvantaged majority of our citizenry.

Even more ironic is the fact that the process of emigrating abroad, presents  a Ghanaian with a higher probability of succeeding in life and at best, breaking through the glass ceiling out there, or breaking through the glass ceiling back at home, at worst. Most Ghanaians will be in a position to recount a story, where a friend or relative, struggling to make ends meet here in Ghana, experiences a dramatic positive change in circumstances where lifestyle has been transformed beyond recognition.

So the million dollar question is, how do we place value in and on every Ghanaian? Simplistic as it sounds, we have to treat each Ghanaian the same way we treat children of Royalty or the President.

The process of placing value on the Ghanaian begins well before he or she is born. The appropriate Health infrastructure must be in place. Expectant mothers in the cities or towns should have access to Health Institutions. Ante-Natal medical examinations and classes should be made mandatory for every expectant mother and should be free on the National Health Service. Free because it is an investment in the individual that the government is making not a waste of scarce national resources.  Records should be kept for each mother and baby during the ante-natal period and these should be closely monitored by nurses and then further up the ladder, Doctors. Basically if anything is noticed that is not right, corrective action must be taken to ensure that the child emerges into this world with the best care and in good health. Advances in medicine means that most situations can be addressed.

For expectant mothers in the rural areas, medical staff can be equipped with the vehicles, motorcycles, boats and where applicable, aircraft to be able to reach out to the expectant mothers out in the inaccessible villages. It sounds preposterous initially but this is precisely the point I am making. If the daughter of the President found herself unwell and pregnant in an inaccessible village somewhere in the Afram Plains, It wouldn’t sound preposterous to employ the Airforce to retrieve her. It would be the right thing to do. This is because of the value we, as a society place on the daughter of the President.

Just as we would pull all stops to get the daughter of the President, out of that remote village in the Afram Plains and into the best possible medical care, we must place a similar value on each and every expectant Ghanaian woman. The moment we configure our collective mindset accordingly to accept that each Ghanaian mother has a value akin to that of a President’s daughter, we will be well on the way to the future development of our country

To be Continued . . . .