Some have said a clean mind resides in a clean body. Though this may be true, a few things I have observed around outpatient health facilities in Ghana make me wonder what sort of minds we leave health facilities with.

The Health Cost of Congestion

“In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones.”

If you are a reader who has gotten this far and are in midlife with no idea what your chronic health status is, get yourself checked.

Chronic Diseases: My Personal Conversation. Image credit - medlife

In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s opinion “the real things haven’t changed. It is still best, to be honest, and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures, and have courage when things go wrong.”

That documents like the Ghana Health Service Facts and Figures are released annually with little fanfare but the inauguration of boreholes and other similar projects attract our attention and receive significant press coverage is indicative of this reality.

Health Facts and Figures; Putting the Evidence in Context. Image credit - Henk de Vries

In typical style, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “valour consists in the power of self-recovery so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease.”

In essence, our stupidity is fuelling the malaria economy. I have stated elsewhere that if malaria treatment was a tax, all Ghanaians by default will be tax compliant.

The Malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito. File image

“Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that this no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.”