Because I am interested in the field of healthcare, I choose to do volunteer work in the local healthcare setting. My placement is St. Patrick Hospital, a private hospital in Hohoe. They have OPD, consulting room, wards, theatre, dispensary, lab, injection room, dental dept, and X-ray dept in the hospital. The first day of placement we went around and visited the environment. I was shocked by the settings, especially the theatre. It was very simple and crude. I didn’t think they could keep the room clean enough for surgery. A man there told us that he does all the surgeries. The incredible fact is that he is just a trained assistant rather than a highly qualified doctor. I can’t imagine what has happened in the room. Well...It is Africa...I told myself.
In fact, staffing is a bigger problem than settings or equipments. In my opinion, the healthcare system in Ghana is like an umbrella that has only skeleton. They have an integrated structure but it doesn’t work very well. There are administrations that take responsibility for healthcare policy and resource integration. According to the policy, hospitals in Ghana are divided into different levels such as national hospital, regional hospital, district hospital and others. If a patient can’t receive appropriate treatment in a hospital, he/she will be referred to a higher level hospital. They also have evaluation system to assess the hospital’s operations. The healthcare system is well-built, but the problem is that there are not enough highly qualified doctors and nurses. A doctor may have to travel between several hospitals to see the patients. That’s why there are a lot of local assistants, but their professional ability is another question. “Staffing is the most important problem” the guest speaker said, “Once we have enough doctors and other professionals, there is no problem.”
Training is the most important action they have to take now. The Ghana government expects that the gap will decrease in several years. If we think the developing country is a potential market, can we play any role in the process of its development? I think education is one of the fields we can think about. A program like CCS may be a useful tool. We can build a connection between the professionals of the developed countries and the potential customers from the developing countries. As I know, many doctors in my country have passion to volunteer in these poorer regions. They can share their knowledge and clinical experience by speech or side-by-side work with local staffs. Through the connection we can enhance our partnership with our existing customers and can develop the potential customers. Most important of all, we contribute to the healthcare development. Just like our mission, we improve the health of people of the world.
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