Who takes another country’s medical records?

It is most humbling to have your president ghostwrite your column.

That is, if your president is as intelligent, inspirational and as aspirational as my president.

This installment of Tissues Of The Issues generously borrows from the thinking of President John Mahama, whose hallowed words from a recent interview, inspired our title.

His media engagements, especially after his historic address at the 81st United Nations General Assembly, have delivered brilliant strokes of oratorical fireworks and subject matter scholarship. Mahama doesn’t placate you with worn-out cliches; he looks into your heart and sends off a verdict you can’t reject.

Suicide compact

For instance, on the sidelines of the UN Assembly, he challenged corporate America to inject some humanity and respect into how they treat Africa, and rethink the philosophy behind aid and the power dynamics that undergird our relationships as sovereign nations.

During an interview about Ghana’s position on America’s Global Health Funding Compact, a facility that will deliver $109Million for five years, the President stated that the compact was rejected by his cabinet with remarkable dispatch.

The terms were demeaning, insulting and surprisingly inhuman.

The President asked the best rhetorical question since the invention of printing: “Who takes another country’s medical records? In addition to asking for Ghana’s pathogen profile and also requiring us to put down some money, the compact tasked Ghana to surrender the medical records of Ghanaians to the USA. There is a more demeaning layer of the deal: When the Americans send shiploads of vaccines, needles, or any frozen concoction to our shores, the sovereignty of Ghana does not qualify us to inspect the consignment before accepting or rejecting them.

We must love the items and smile to use them, willy-nilly.

The president has consequently instructed his minister of health to communicate to the American Ambassador in Ghana, that we will be fine without a health compact that does not respect the humanity and sovereignty of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana.

Kenya is also reported to have rejected a similar health compact worth several millions.

Meanwhile, it is reported that Big Brother Nigeria has accepted the compact and are already enjoying the millions that accompanied it.

Triumphant capitalism

Why are Americans interested in fixing the health of Africans when some American citizens in America struggle to pay for health insurance?

Some poor Americans prefer to lock themselves up in their poorly-heated apartments, than to approach a health facility. Homeless Americans who sleep under bridges in California and New York, deserve a better health compact than my compatriots in Gomoa Manso and Asankragwaa, who might not believe that some American citizens cannot afford basic health care and also beg for food.

Not everybody in the USA triumphs under America’s triumphant capitalism.

The American Dream is a daily nightmare for those who cannot compete with the ruthlessness of the system.

Those people deserve free vaccines and better health insurance than any kwashiokor child in Asankragwaa.

For those acts of charity, which may not be charitable afterall,  the kwashiorkor child is required to exchange their kwashiokor medical records for three sachets of Oral Rehydration Solution or two boxes of bandages.

Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible for the richest farmer in Asankragwaa to carry a few pieces of his favourite presekese fruits to Massachusetts, without having to strip his royal apparel down to his dwokoto underpants.

From Schiphol through Heathrow to Pearson Airport in Toronto, the average traveller from Africa is treated with so much suspicion and disdain.

They are profiled and penciled as suspects, as their luggage is reduced to a sniffing contest for intelligent dogs who are trained to tell a story with their nose.

Rigging sovereignty

Septuagenarians are led by 19 year old border control officers to investigation rooms, when trained dogs misinterpret the smell of presekese for methamphetamine or cocaine.

The desired instructions would have been to ban all food items and ‘smelly substances’ from Africa.

In place of such an overtly discriminatory tactic are various measures to tighten the admission of black Africans at foreign airports.

Officers have the latitude to seize any item they deem unfit for consumption in their country.

‘How can a small oyibo girl determine what is good for the stomach of an Igbo man from Anambra’, a Nigerian man asked officers at JFK?

On every side, the world is rigged against Africa, and President John Dramani Mahama is confronting the riggers at every turn. The President questions the debt trap for Africans, where we pay eight times more than the rest of the world whenever we borrow money.

The president sends a definitive message about the corruption and collusion in the western financial system, which facilitates $90 billion in illicit financial flows from Africa to developed economies.

Big corporations from these economies add to our debts through misinvoicing and transfer pricing.

Interest and debt servicing takes away another $80billion from Africa, plus $40billion risk premium, bringing the total to $240billion out of very poor countries every year.

Meanwhile, Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Africa totaled only $70billion in 2023, which in 2025, had reduced to $30billion.

How much of their honor and dignity can 54 African countries afford to trade away in exchange for a health compact?

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin

Tissues Of The Issues

bigfrontiers@gmail.com