To Dreams

Last weekend, I was away from family.?They were accommodated in a beautiful vacation home, with plenty of food and drink. I am chasing knowledge here, and the path has been arduous, but it is a blessing to know that my family is taken care of. ?

Our benefactor is someone I operated on.?During a routine review, he had noticed that my wife needed to see the kids in my absence.?He offered a driver, and a whole home, with fully packed fridge and freezer for a full weekend.?He runs a group of companies, I thank God that my service takes some pain away, so he can do his work. This was a gift that enabled me to do my work better too. ?

An interesting counterpoint was that a few weeks after his surgery, we operated on the son of a single mother from Ho, whose surgery had to be paid for by a Facebook friend. The blessing of a surgeon’s calling,?is sometimes rooted in the aspects of human endeavour I am allowed to touch.?The whole beauty of medicine, is its inevitable bond with even the most obscure strands of social fabric.?Real medicine is communal. Any effort to isolate it, or gentrify it… will diminish its impact and dissipate its usefulness.?These two people are from different parts of our society, each with something to give. Each with a right for good health care.?

It is a special privilege to practise medicine in Ghana. It is one place where the impact of even small interventions is made clear to me everyday.?The more I have traveled, the more I have been reminded of this fact. I went to medical school convinced that I had the same right to education as anyone in my class, even though I grew up in Korle Bu and Mamprobi and other classmates grew up in the posher residential areas of Accra. I was sure that if I learned hard enough and trusted in God’s purpose, all my dreams would come true. I am sad to hear differently from younger contemporaries of today.?Slowly my dreams of yesterday seem to them, to be distant figments of what used to be reality. Every time I have tried to convince younger colleagues that one really does not need to know people in high places to rise, the push back has been: look around. There are too many young people now, who believe that one can only go forward with the right contacts.?The power of the dream seems emasculated, connections seem to hold more sway on the prospect of future success. I point out repeatedly, that my dreams continue to come true.

During my current course, I have been walking through the corridors of health innovation. There is a huge gulf between here and where I come from, but dreams are meant for gulfs.?Every solution I can see around me, was just a dream some time ago.?So many people’s dreams have come true, and the most profitable, are those which have impacted multiple lives. Mayo Clinic, was just an idea a century and a while ago. Now on its corridors, the leaders of the world come seeking what they cannot find in their countries.?They spend millions of dollars, and go back better… sometimes. It’s been striking however, to see that people across the road with common colds, trudge these very same corridors for regular care. After all these years of excellence, its threads still knit with the fabric of the community around it. ?I am convinced that this is the essence of good health care.

We have to make healthcare excellence count.?It has to grow in leaps and bounds and shine in our region.?Government institutions have never been where health innovation happens.?And any country that has moved forward in healthcare has had private individuals and entrepreneurs vested in growing the business of healthcare. We need to see more communities lift up health care excellence, research, wellness; instead of celebrating death with signboards that keep increasing in size.?The dreams for better healthcare must not stop. ?

The healthcare quality chasm is waiting for dreams that are big enough.?