The Vice President of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, has identified the Amansie West, Asante Bekwai and areas along the Kumasi-Accra highway in Ashanti as some of the areas in Ghana with the poorest health care system. According to him, while some of the health care facilities exist just in name because of the absence of qualified medical staff, the location of others make accessibility to their services very difficult. Speaking at a forum in Kumasi, the Association’s Vice President blamed part of the problem on the unequal distribution of medical doctors and inadequate qualified health staff.
Dr. Poku-Adusei, who is also the Medical Superintendent of the Suntreso Government Hospital in Kumasi , disclosed that currently, Ghana ’s Doctor-patient ratio stands at one to 12 thousand patients. This, he described as a very serious set back to accessible health care in the country. Dr. Opoku-Adusei said that Ghana has been rated as the third country with the highest incidence of road accidents in the world. Dr. Opoku-Adusei regretted that though the Kumasi-Accra Highway has been the worst accident prone route in the country for sometime now, and continues to record numerous and fatal accidents, there is no standard hospital along the route.
