No, not another Doctors’ Strike in Ghana!

Any Ghanaians whose family member dies or is harmed because of the strike of doctors in the public sector should band together, find the best lawyer in the country, and sue the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) for damages. Enough is enough!! Some us will launch a mass movement to help find money to pay the legal fees of the aggrieved families.

When will the GMA and its greedy doctors ever stand up for the welfare of ordinary Ghanaians instead of repeatedly holding the country hostage with their unquenchable thirst for money? Doctors in Ghana organize for only one thing: MONEY.

One never hears about doctors in Ghana organizing to volunteer their services to help anybody in Ghana or anywhere else after a natural disaster. It seems that every time they get together their issues are always self-satisfying: their salary and working conditions. Adding their salaries to their fat allowances, Ghanaian doctors are some of the highest paid public workers in Africa. But they are never satisfied!

Doctors in Ghana act as if they were recruited under duress to sacrifice their lives to become doctors. One would have thought they went into the “noble profession” because they wanted to help heal the sick. The truth is almost all doctors are lucky enough to be actually working in their chosen profession; that is a privilege that few people in the world enjoy. Clearly, many doctors in Ghana chose their profession for a reason other than to help others. Even soldiers who put their lives on the line to protect their fellow countrymen do not whine about money as much as these pompous, spoiled brats do. The problem is that we, the taxpayers of Ghana, subsidize their education and training, give them extra money in allowances and they take that extra cash, pay for foreign qualifying exams, and at the least opportunity, drop their commitment to Ghana and leave the country.

Ghanaian patients and their families continue to suffer the disrespect, insults, and condescending attitudes at the public health institutions run by these Shylocks. It is time the suffering public rose and claimed their rights. Ghanaian taxpayers should insist on respect, dignity, and competence from doctors. Like a soldier kicking you in the neck while dressed in taxpayer-supplied uniforms and boots, our doctors kick us whenever we are down with an illness even though we paid for almost all of their medical education. Perhaps our medical schools should be more selective in whom they choose as medical students.

We were recently reminded of a chapter entitled, “Silent and lethal: How quiet corruption undermines Africa’s development” in the 2010 World Bank’s Africa Development Indicators Report. Ghana was listed as having “leaked” 80% of its non-salary budget in the health sector. (http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/04/07/000333037_20100407014412/Rendered/PDF/538800PUB0AFR0101Official0Use0Only1.pdf) Who are responsible for this corruption in the public health systems? It is largely the same greedy doctors placed in charge of government health programmes.

It is time for Ghanaian taxpayers, who foot the education and training costs for these doctors and get their health care needs neglected and their lives endangered, to rise up and seize the public health systems. The hospitals and health centres belong NOT to the doctors but to the general public. If the doctors walk out on the patients, the people should lock the striking doctors out when they decide to return to work. Those who are respectful of the general public and continue to work during the strike should be identified and allowed to come. But those who join the strike should be locked out of the public health institutions. It is time for the suffering public to speak up.

In the meantime, the government, so afraid politically to take on these greedy doctors, should stand up to them and protect the innocent public. Our labor laws should be strengthened immediately by parliament to make it illegal for any individual doctors (or any organization whose membership includes doctors) whose education was subsidized by the government to call for or participate in a strike action affecting the delivery of health care. And, when the GMA calls for a strike, it should be slapped with daily heavy fines and its leaders imprisoned for each day that the strike continues. Eventually, that union will go broke and Ghanaians will be no worse off than they were.

Gene King

A citizen who is fed up!