When “Ghana will happen to you” becomes real: Observing systemic gaps in Ghana’s health system

Two friends lived, trained, and worked together for more than a decade, sharing not just an apartment with common facilities, but a quiet, unspoken trust. Ours was the kind of friendship built on certainty.

If one of us needed money in the middle of the night, he could walk into the other’s room, take what he needed without waking him, and mention it weeks later in passing, no explanations, no suspicion, no questions asked. That was the ease between us.

So when D shook me awake at about 3:00 a.m., asking for medicine for a stomach ache, I knew something was wrong.

D does not take his health lightly. He is meticulously careful, informed, covered from preventive routines to insurance.

Though he comes from a family of health professionals and chose not to practice clinically, he studied health administration and went on to pursue an Msc in Public Health. For him to wake me, a dance student and political science graduate, for advice on a health concern was deeply unsettling. It meant this was beyond the ordinary.

I suggested we go to the hospital. He refused at first, insisting he would manage. But about 90 minutes later, he returned, bent over in pain, asking for immediate help.

We drove roughly 30 minutes to Hospital R. What unfolded over the next 36 hours revealed not just his suffering, but the quiet strain within a system stretched thin.

At triage, the first question was why we had bypassed other facilities to come there. It is reasonable to ask about patient routing. Yet the nurse on duty without a name tag returned to this concern repeatedly during the assessment.

Her tone carried frustration, and the focus seemed divided between managing a patient in visible pain and questioning our decision to seek care there. In that moment, as D winced beside me, the priority felt misplaced.

We were told to purchase medications to complete first aid. The hospital pharmacy did not have one of the required drugs. A nearby private pharmacy advertising 24/7 service was closed at 5:40 a.m.

Diagnostic centres capable of performing imaging would not open until after 8:30 a.m. And so, between 3:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., D remained in relentless pain without a confirmed diagnosis. Time moved heavily. Each minute felt longer than the last.

After 9:00 a.m., imaging finally revealed the problem. But resolution did not come swiftly. It took nearly three hours to be referred to the surgical team, and another two hours before the decision to operate was made. His pain had begun around 1:00 a.m. He arrived at the hospital shortly after 5:00 a.m., yet by 2:00 p.m., there was still no definitive intervention.

Temporary measures dulled the pain only slightly. He described it as sharp and concentrated, as though struck repeatedly in the same small spot.

At the theatre, we were told that more urgent cases required attention. His surgery was postponed to the following day. He was moved back to the emergency ward, where beds were scarce, and the air felt thick with waiting.

And yet, amid the strain, there were moments of humanity that shone through. The surgical team carried themselves with professionalism and calm. Dr G, a young female doctor on the team, stood out in particular. She made sure D secured a bed, staying beyond her scheduled hours to see it through. In a system under pressure, her commitment felt personal, intentional, and deeply reassuring.

D eventually went into surgery at 2:00 p.m. the next day. The procedure, described as straightforward, lasted about four hours. By then, exhaustion had settled into all of us, physical, emotional, invisible.

One of the hardest parts of the experience was not just the pain, but the silence. Updates were difficult to obtain. We wandered busy corridors repeatedly, searching for members of the care team just to understand what was happening.

A centralised help desk or structured communication channel could have eased so much anxiety. In moments of crisis, information becomes a form of comfort.

The most visible strain was the lack of beds. I watched another patient clearly in distress, being redirected between Hospital R and Hospital K because neither had space. Equipment limitations were apparent. The system did not lack dedication; it lacked capacity.

This is not an attack on any individual or institution. It is a reflection of an account of what happens when urgency meets limitation. When pain collides with process.

By: Hanson Agyemang, a Broadcast Journalist with Channel One TV and Citi FM