A GNA Feature by Anthony Bells Kafui Kanyi

Ho, Nov. 18, GNA - The departed souls of expectant mothers of Leklebi-Worgbe and their unborn children have missed this day. They died in the process of having babies as there was no medical help. No clinics. The clinics were far away down hill.

These women certainly would have wished to witness the inauguration of a clinic (the only cement block house) at Leklebi-Worgbe, on the peak of the Togoland Atakora Mountain but unfortunately could not live to meet the day.

Since the beginning of time, uncountable number of expectant mothers in the community had lost their lives sometimes together with their babies. This is largely because of the absence of a health facility.

A large number of women in the community do not know what ante- natal or post-natal care is. The few, who can cope with the bother, travel to the district capital, Hohoe, to stay with relatives to access healthcare. The poor majority however have no option than to either go through labour perhaps at the farm or in the forest, while looking for firewood or at the stream in search of water for the household.

Pregnant women with complications are carried on makeshift hammocks down the Mountain en route to Leklebi-Duga, the nearest clinic about six kilometers away with many returning without their babies or dying with them. The people there are bonded by a strong communal spirit. Anytime someone is seriously sick, it means no farm job until the sick is put on the hammock down the Mountain to the Clinic at Duga or far away Hohoe Government Hospital.

Quite a number of pregnant women had delivered babies on rocks, in caves and on leaves of trees while descending the Mountain to the nearest clinic.

It is for this reason that women and children especially of Leklebi-Worgbe remain grateful to Mr. Suur Maj Zonnveld, Chief Executive of Ghana Support, an international non-governmental organization, for building an 18,000 Euro clinic on top of the mountain to bring healthcare to the doorstep of people in the community.

Apparently, Ghana Support was moved by continuing reports of women and children under five losing their lives on the mountain on regular basis. Togbe Obiri Joseph, the Chief of the Community, told the GNA that most women in the area had developed knee and waist pains and that young men there usually carried their colleagues and some women who developed fractures over the mountain to Togo for cure.

The community could therefore not hesitate but offered communal labour including carrying several bags of cement and other building materials on the head from the foot of the mountain to the top for the project. The only way to the community of 500 people is a tortuous footpath with rocks and big stones serving as of stairs. No car goes there. One has to pass through cocoa farms crossing rivers to make it to the community.

The place becomes very inaccessible during the rainy season, so most politicians shy away from the area during the rainy season with few making it to the top of the mountain during the dry season. It takes between one to two hours to reach the community, trekking from the foot of the mountain.

It was said that few British and American visitors in their bid to beat the time record, rolled down the Mountain and were only rescued by big trees, many times without any injury. The streams meandering through the rocks and caves serve as the sources of drinking water with the sun and moon providing light for day and night respectively. The community cannot boast of any social amenity perhaps by virtue of where nature placed it-on top of a mountain between two nations, Ghana and Togo.

The only basic school in the community collapsed several years ago due to the unwillingness of teachers to accept postings to the community. The birth of this clinic however has brought a fresh wind of happiness and life into the community. For some time now, women especially have been in celebration mood with reports of some feigning pregnancies and ill health so as to have a feel of the facility and healthcare in general having missed such a care since birth. Mansah, 49, a manana Seller, who said she was pregnant said having had two children under very difficult circumstances, the one in her belly would be delivered in the new facility. As she spoke, her husband, a cocoa and coffee farmer, applauded.

Some children have made the clinic environment their second home and are almost always found there admiring the facility.

At a short ceremony in Ho to hand over the facility to the Ghana Health Service, Mr Joseph Amenowode, the Volta Regional Minister and the Member of Parliament for the area, said the facility was timely as the country was making great efforts at achieving Millennium Development Goals Four and Five by reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Certainly, it was timely against the background where figures of maternal and child deaths in the community are not recorded. The certainty is the many cases of pregnant women and children under five years die at the farms, forests and at the streams and are buried few hours after their death.

Funerals are mostly not organized for these people because of traditional beliefs that a pregnant woman who died with her child or children who died before attaining five years deserved no funerals. Though the celebration is reaching a very high pitch with men joining the fray, drumming and singing on special days in honour of the facility ahead of its official inauguration in December, the party will be incomplete if children of school going age in the community continue to be out of school.

These kids have the right to education and need to be given the opportunity.

The classroom pavilion constructed several years ago is wasting in the heart of the mountain community.

Few children are enrolled in a nearby French school in Togo while majority help their parents on the farm with the importance of education being lost on them. Only a handful travel several kilometers down the mountain to nearby village schools, mostly barefooted and in tattered clothes. The GNA learnt that teachers do not accept postings to the school in view of the remoteness of the community. The Chief said though the community tried to make teachers posted there feel very comfortable, they do not stay for a term before saying goodbye to the community.

This is a great challenge to the Ghana Education Service and the Hohoe Municipal Assembly to re-open the basic school and ensure that teachers posted there stay and teach children just like their colleagues in the urban areas.

Already, neighboring Togo had taken the lead in ensuring that schools in those difficult to reach areas were operational. Our dear nation must not fail its future leaders and force them into schools in another man's land. Once again, our institutions must work! Checks indicate that schools in the Republic of Togo side of most border towns were doing better than that of Ghana.

It is therefore essential that stakeholders invest in those areas, organize incentive packages to keep teachers and health workers especially there so that people in those communities could have improvement in quality of life and also to deter young ones from migrating from those serene environments to the urban areas in search of non-existing jobs. With the necessary basic social amenities, Leklebi-Worgbe with its natural settings and environment which they themselves described as "Heaven" could become an enviable tourist destination where foreign and local tourists would want to stay for some days to have a feel of the way of life of the local people on the mountain.

Women of Worgbe, permission is granted to continue to celebrate the birth of a long awaited clinic. Let drums sound and bells ring for it is a celebration of life.

For now, you and your children would not die needlessly because your health needs would be attended to without stress and hopefully your basic school and other amenities would follow.