Drs. on Strike & Health Minister Goes to Hospital Overseas

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“The Minister of Health, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, has received the blessings of

President John Evans Atta-Mills to go on a week leave at a crucial stage when public

sector doctors have taken off their stethoscope and refused to attend to emergency

cases. The Minister of Communication Haruna Iddrisu, who is acting in Yieleh

Chireh’s stead, said his colleague will be off for seven days and does not think it

would affect the current crisis ongoing in the health sector” (Ghanaweb, October 14,

2011).

“A statement from the Ministry of Information and signed by Hon. John Tia Akologu

disclosed that the President granted the Health Minister his request for leave on

the 11th of October, 2011 purely on medical grounds” Ghanaweb October 17, 2011)

Ah! Filmic signification of it all

The neocolonial elitist thieves

The pen-robbers of our doom

Moronic elitist thieves, thieves

Killers of postcolonial dreams

Garlanded in expensive SUVs

Prefer state-owned SUVS

Instead of better healthcare

Atta Mess-iah’s messy NDC

Atta Mess-iah’s theater

Of a better Ghana

Of a year in action

Of miragic sod-cuttings

Tumbling in a cesspool

Where chaos is kinship

Of enduring anomies

Of birthing mediocrities

Of stunted progress

Like Saharan rivers

Dry at the source

Luxuriant-ing futility

Circuses of train-wrecks

Of deploying chaos

Of deceitful declarations

Of vacuous speeches

Of savage policies

In search of strikes

In search of anomies

Atta Mess-iah’s messy NDC

Dazed troubadours of chaos

Watersheds of letdowns

Fetishizing messianic chaos

Career gyrations of chaos

Moronic elitist thieves

Thieves who prize SUVs

CARS they never make

CARS above all things

Above HEALTHCARE

Above good roads

Above good education

Above GOOD food/water

Above good electricity

Above future generations

Minster of Health strikes

Yieleh Chireh is on strike

Strikes & poised for overseas

Strikes for better healthcare

Better healthcare overseas

Yieleh Chireh is on strike

Like doctors

Like nurses

Like pharmacists

Elitist entitlements

Yieleh is on leave

Leaving his SUVs

The elitist prize & honor

Not good healthcare

Not good infrastructure

Not good education

Not good food/water

But obsessed with SUVs

Elites diseased in SUVS

Ministering SUV cargo-cults

Of lethal doses of strike

Ah! Minister of Health

Has gone elsewhere

To heal his own strike

So all strike, strike & strike

Strikes from local doctors

Strikes from local nurses

Strikes from local pharmacists

Strikes from local hospitals

Hospitals of strikes

Of dilapidation

Of mismanagement

Of indiscipline

Of corruption

Our viruses of healthcare

Our trappings of health

Our deathtraps of health

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral

historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with

her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her

pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical”

poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com