Two in Three Ghanaians die before age 50

Ghana is sick and dying and that is official according to the Public Agenda.

Most Ghanaians (66 percent) die before the age of 50 and of the few that cross the line, fewer still live longer enough to reach the retiring age of 60.

The revelation was made by Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, Ghana’s Chief Pathologist and President of the Ghana Medical Association, according to the paper, lamenting that, “the health status of this country is bad. It is very bad”.

He said about 60 – 70 per cent of the country’s health problems relate to communicable and preventable diseases including epidemics, according to ‘Country assistance Strategy for Ghana’, 2000 – 2003, a Government of Ghana and the World Bank Group literature.

Prof. Akosa was worried that nothing has changed since he first brought up the subject of the bad state of the nation’s health at his inaugural lecture at the University of Ghana in June of last year adding that, “if there has been any change it has been a change for the worse”, Prof. Akosa said.

According to the Chief Pathologist, statistics generated from autopsy data collected between 1990 and 1999 of a sample of 25,000 deaths indicate that about two out of three Ghanaians (66 per cent) do not reach 50 years; 79 per cent (four out of five) do not make it to the retiring age of 60 and 84 per cent die before 65 years which is a far cry from the UK’s figure of 19% dying before age 65.

The statistics further indicate that most of these deaths are caused by infections and preventable diseases and causes. Of the deaths 25 per cent are from infections, 10 per cent from hypertension, 6.8 per cent from cancers and 6.5 per cent from Tuberculosis (TB). Road traffic accidents account for 8.3% of the deaths.

TB cases, according to the GMA boss, are on the increase due to the spread of HIV/AIDS. He explained that comparative research done in 1988/89 and 1998/99 showed an increase in ‘disseminated Tuberculosis’, which is closely associated with HIV/AIDS. The research also showed an increase in the number of female TB patients and that cannot be removed from the country’s HIV/AIDS profile, which indicates that more females are infected with HIV than males.

Cancers, especially liver cancer, is also taking its toll on the population, a situation that the pathologist described as preventable. Equally troublesome is the situation of malaria and other fevers. “We create five-star breeding grounds for mosquitoes. That is why malaria is still a common problem in the country”, the GMA boss pointed out.

Prof. Akosa said that most of these deaths are caused by the fact that people do not seek medical help when they have health problems “or they report late to the hospital or cannot afford the cost of medical bills”. He gave the example of some hypertensive patients who due to poverty fail to follow through with full treatment as prescribed by doctors.

He also identified the equality of drugs and medical services offered to patients as some of the causes of the high death rate in the country. According to him, the Ghanaian drug market is over liberalized thus any drug finds it way into the country and wondered why local companies cannot be supported to produce antibiotics, and other drugs for the cure and management of diseases like TB, malaria, hypertension and diabetics. If 80 per cent of these drugs are manufactured locally, he said, medical help will be affordable to a lot of people. He also advocated that the Noguchi Memorial Institute be supported to manufacture vaccines for immunization against liver cancer.

The Chief Pathologist was certain that a good social housing policy, proper environmental management as well as the adoption of healthy lifestyles by Ghanaians would turn the situation round dramatically.