Should Ghanaians Not Voluntarily Contribute To A Special Fund For Public-Sector Healthcare Professionals - To Prevent Them From Embarking On Future Strike Action?

Creative and original thinking, will always enable our homeland Ghana to forge ahead, after every crisis it experiences.

How, for example, can our nation and its people, turn the crisis caused by the strike embarked on by public-sector medical doctors, into an opportunity to improve the lot of all public-sector healthcare professionals: without burdening the state in so doing?

Despite the insufferable arrogance displayed by some of the leadership of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), over the last few days - and in spite of the fact that in pursuit of their demands they have made it abundantly clear that they are prepared to abandon the sick and dying, in government hospitals and polyclinics, to their fate -  should ordinary people in Ghana not create a fund which will be used to pay for the upkeep of public-sector healthcare professionals, who contract life-threatening infections, from the patients they treat?

Surely, as a people, if we sacrificed some of the billions of cedis we waste on funerals in this country, and some of the vast sums we also spend entertaining ourselves (with most of us overeating and drinking alcohol excessively to the detriment of our health) during weekends, and paid such monies into a special fund for the upkeep of public-sector healthcare professionals, who contract dangerous infections from patients attending government hospitals,  would we not be contributing to their welfare?

If such a special fund existed, what healthcare professional in Ghana, would ever think of embarking on strike action, which denies treatment to innocent people who fall ill and risk dying if left unattended by  medical doctors, and other public-sector healthcare professionals, I ask?

For the common weal, should entities in the Ghanaian business world, their employees, market women, artisans, students and Ghanaians in the Diaspora, etc., etc., all not contribute their widow's mite to such a special fund for public-sector healthcare professionals?

And as their contribution, could the best companies in Ghana's financial services sector, not work together to handle the investnent of some of the cash from the fund pro bono - as a joint CSR project: so that it will grow steadily over time?

And instead of pocketing the cash held in dormant accounts that have remained unclaimed for decades, what stops all the banks in Ghana from transferring those monies to such a fund, I ask?

Since they already have a track record of receiving and dispensing public donations into a special fund, in  transparent fashion, perhaps Osei Kwame Despite and his Best Point Savings and Loans Company Limited, could handle the creation of such a  fund?

Will such a gesture from ordinary Ghanaians not earn the eternal gratitude of public-sector healthcare professionals?

And will it not make them abandon the use of strike action - that ends up making victims of innocent people in Ghana, who need treatment when they fall ill, and those who  risk dying in medical emergencies  - in fighting for better compensation packages from their employer, the Ghana Health Service? Food for thought.

Post Script

In light of the untold suffering caused to sick people, by the callous refusal of striking public-sector medical doctors to treat the sick and dying, would it not be wise for all Ghanaians to also agree to contribute 5 cedis, to grow the internally generated funds of government hospitals and clinics across Ghana, each time they access such public-sector healthcare facilities?

 Would that not help improve conditions in government hospitals and clinics across Ghana - a nation with a cash-strapped government that is also indebted to the tune of tens of billions of cedis?

In so doing would ordinary people not be helping to improve the various local  government hospitals and clinics that they attend when they fall ill - without having to rely on a government that seldom has the money to improve such healthcare facilities, in the first place, to do so?