HEALTHCARE AND HEARING FROM STUDENTS DAY 4!

Maadwo! 

This was our earliest morning yet, we left our hotel at 9:30! Our first stop was the University of Ghana which is the oldest and largest university in Ghana. The university was built in 1948 under British rule and was originally associated with the University of England. At this time there were around 150 students but this number has grown substantially to over 20,000 today. in the early years, papers and exams were actually sent back to England to be graded. Eventually the university was Africanized and now faculty on campus are responsible for grading. Tuition is very cheap, around $1000 to $2000 per semester for Ghanaian students and around $5,000 for International students (US Dollars). We had a lengthy bus tour around campus as the campus is over 50 acres. It was interesting to see that similar to UST, the University of Ghana has matching buildings. The buildings are primarily white with orange clay roofs, what Ghanaians would categorize as colonial architecture. After the tour, we were welcomed by some students of the university for lunch. (I ordered red red and plantain, my favorite Ghanain meal I’ve eaten thus far.) I had the opportunity to talk with a young woman named Josephine, a third year economics student. She was so welcoming and easy to make conversation with! I learned that we watch some of the same tv shows and listen to some of the same music.

Next we toured the Nyaho Medical Center, a private hospital in Accra. Overall it is relatively similar to our hospitals in the United States, except this one is on a much smaller scale. We learned that Ghanaians don’t go to the doctor as often as most Americans do, in fact they primarily go only for emergencies. It was also interesting to hear that there are 3 levels of hospitals; primary, secondary and tertiary. The expectation is that patients will go to their regional primary clinic and from there, the physician may recommend they proceed to either the secondary or tertiary. Certain medical services are covered by national health insurance while other services such as cancer screenings are not. Following our tour of Nyaho, we had a talk by the Regional Health Administrator of the Greater Accra Region. In this lecture we learned about Ghana’s response to COVID-19. After two initial cases in March of 2020, Ghanain officials started off by contact tracing and testing. From this, they established an isolation center and worked on providing test results via internet. Similar to the United States, Ghana rolled out vaccines in phases from most to least vulnerable. Ghanaian government did not make vaccines mandatory but they did make them widely accessible!

Dinner this evening was rice balls with peanut butter stew, delicious! Now we are off to go salsa dancing! 

Oa ye (goodbye) ! 

Julia Gasper