A LETTER TO JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF GHANA.
Kumasi — In a masterclass display national irony, Dr. Kwame Adu Ofori, a 47-year-old lifesaver, tragically checked out after his own heart staged a protest and found no rescue team equipped to negotiate its demands.
Dr. Adu Ofori, a celebrated Emergency Physician, suffered a heart attack — or in fancier Latin, a myocardial infarction (MI) — the sort of crisis he had reversed countless times for countless patients. Except this time, the patient was him, and the Republic of Uncommon Sense decided to remind him that while he may know how to fix hearts, his country has no clue.
Sources at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) report that the ER doctors gathered around him like helpless altar boys. Why? Well, there’s no catheterization laboratory (Cath lab) in Kumasi — or, for that matter, anywhere north, south or east of Accra. In this nation of 35 million souls and 365 prayer camps, you may dial heaven faster than you’ll find a cath lab within driving distance.
Undeterred, the good doctor’s colleagues did what we always do: outsourced the solution to Accra. He was bundled onto a plane — the airborne version of a ‘get well soon’ card — accompanied by a fellow doctor whose medical kit consisted mostly of optimism and the sign of the cross.
They landed at Kotoka International Airport. An ambulance waited on the tarmac, its engine purring like a loyal dog. But alas, Death, that punctual civil servant, arrived ahead of the paperwork. Dr. Adu Ofori did not make it to Korle Bu.
Analysts say this incident underlines the state-of-the-ambulance service in the Republic of Uncommon Sense, where we have boreholes for votes but no labs for hearts. Where we cut sod for hospitals that birth grand billboards and empty wards. Where we spend on convoys, conferences, and commemorative T-shirts, but a Cath lab in Kumasi is still on pre-order from 1965.
A senior proverb commentator put it bluntly: “When the drum is for rent, any fool can dance.” And dance we do — to funerals, to campaign rallies, to commission yet another unstaffed polyclinic built mostly for ribbon-cutting ceremonies and Instagram selfies.
May Dr. Adu Ofori rest in peace — a peace denied him by the very system he served. And may the living remember this headline the next time they clap for flyovers and golden shovels instead of demanding a simple lab to keep the next heart beating.
In the Republic of Uncommon Sense, the doctor can heal you — but who will heal the doctor? Over to you, Election 2028.
Jimmy Writes (Facebook)
