Dr. Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, a Fellow at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD)-Public Health has emphasized the critical need to prioritize primary healthcare to ensure a healthier society.
Speaking on Morning Starr with Francis Abban, Dr. Asiedu outlined how effective primary healthcare management can lead to significant long-term benefits for both individuals and the economy.
“All the data suggests that if you want a healthy society, you need to keep people away from secondary and tertiary care as much as possible. You need to manage them in primary healthcare.
“The higher the percentage of the population you are managing in primary healthcare, the better the health care of your society,” Dr. Asiedu stated.
Dr. Asiedu highlighted that routine check-ups and mass screening are pivotal in early diagnosis and management of diseases, which ultimately reduces the need for more intensive and costly secondary and tertiary care.
“For every dollar you put into primary healthcare, you get a tenfold return. The more people are hospitalized, the higher the cost of treating them and the lower their productivity,” he explained.
The economic impact of poor health management is significant, particularly for self-employed individuals and those in the SME sector. “When people are not working because they are hospitalized, there is a knock-on effect on taxes they would have paid and on overall productivity,” Dr. Asiedu noted.
Addressing the current state of healthcare in Ghana, Dr. Asiedu expressed concern that many Ghanaians only seek medical attention when they are already unwell, leading to late diagnoses and poorer prognoses.
“How many Ghanaians do you hear telling you they are going to the hospital for a check-up? Early diagnosis leads to better prognosis because the disease management trajectory can be more effectively determined,” he said.
He further pointed out that late diagnoses result in higher costs due to the need for more extensive tests and expensive treatments, which many people cannot afford.
“A lot of people are walking wounded,” Dr. Asiedu remarked. “We need to start having the conversation about how to situate how people are managed when it comes to health in this country and where our emphasis should go.”
Moreover, Dr. Asiedu raised concerns about the disparity between locally produced medications and those imported, underscoring the need for greater self-reliance in the pharmaceutical sector. “A lot of the medications that we take here in the country are imported. The ratio of what we produce here against what’s brought in shows a clear disparity.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Emmanuel Mensah
