Primary healthcare would remain the ultimate form of healthcare with a lot of benefits for individuals and the nation as a whole. This system enables an efficient and effective healthcare delivery even in the secondary healthcare system because health problems are detected early and that makes treatment easier and less expensive.
Primary healthcare ensures efficient healthcare delivery in a country by cutting short long period of hospitalization. Early detection and treatment of ill-health prevents admission of easily-to-treat health conditions. It effectively improves life expectancy of the citizens, reduces morbidity and mortality rate.
Primary healthcare makes for equal/equitable access and distribution of healthcare delivery. This is possible because it is easier and cheaper to access by both the rich and the poor; that cannot always be the case for secondary healthcare services. I have seen many patients who were left with no choice but go home against medical advice in the most helpless stage of disease conditions; simply because they cannot afford the huge cost of treatment. Others too are left to die due to lack of fund to have the right but expensive treatment.
Again, primary healthcare makes equity in healthcare delivery possible. For example, it takes the use of simple medical tool like glucometer and blood pressure machine to monitor blood sugar and blood pressure regularly to help the management/prevention of Diabetes and Hypertension respectively. It is cheaper and at the same time, the most effective method of helping prevent or proper management of some of these health problems.
Another example is this; a rich man and a poor man both got infected with malaria, they both can spend less money to buy cheap same anti-malaria drug for cure and that can be done at the primary healthcare level. If malaria treatment is not done on time at the primary healthcare level, the infection can progress to a complicated stage called cerebral malaria. Secondary healthcare is now needed to deal with it and this is the point where the rich can afford the expensive treatment and the poor may not.
Primary healthcare has wide range of benefits for individual citizens financially and the national economy as a whole. Citizens in the labor force would maintain good health and not spend productive hours in health facilities trying to cure or manage all forms of preventable diseases, including chronic ones.
More citizens in good health means less money would be spent on secondary health care. As indicated earlier, the government through the national health insurance program spends huge sums of money to settle bills of healthcare services especially at the secondary level. A well-established primary healthcare system as an effective front gate, would cut down huge expenditure.
On this note, I appeal to the relevant authorities in charge of national healthcare, stakeholders (including the general public), opinion leaders, healthcare professionals and the media to bring into focus, broader discussions on this important subject, especially primary healthcare. The four main levels of healthcare, the individual patient, the care team, the organization/institutions and political environment (Ferlie and Shortel (2001) must be empowered to work and synchronize their respective roles in order to achieve more effective and efficient healthcare system in the country. This would afford the ordinary Ghanaian the opportunity to receive improved healthcare. It would also reduce the rate at which the political class, the rich quickly rush to Europe, U.S.A. and other places to receive healthcare because they trust the system run over there.
Individuals in other countries would like to travel to Ghana for health needs once data and evidence point to Ghana as one of the leading countries for best healthcare systems in the world.
This is completely doable; it should start with building up the most effective, efficient structural foundation of any other forms of healthcare- Primary Health Care System. No amount of investment is too huge for this; the benefit is unmatched. If Ghana is to develop to the point desirable by all, one of the things not to toil with is the health of its citizens. As it is often said, “a healthy nation is a prosperous nation”.
