Why Only 66% of African Health Ministers are Medical Doctors – Prince Akpah
In this time of a global crisis where the
world is faced with graving concerns on how to fight the coronavirus, I am
deeply concerned about the readiness of Africa’s leadership as this has become
a testing period for our leaders to showcase their experience in regards to
occupying the distinguished position as health ministers in Africa.
With worrying predictions from the World
Health Organisation and other international NGOs, about how the continent will
be hit with lots of cases and eventually deaths because of the lack of adequate
and well-equipped health facilities, this whole period does not only scare us
but presents an opportunity for African leaders to prove their worth and
showcase how prepared they are to engineer the development of the health sector
in the shortest possible time.
During my research on listing who health
ministers in Africa are, I developed an interest to also look at their
professional backgrounds and how qualified they are to occupy such position
beyond their political affiliations. Through this, I discovered out of the 54
countries on the continent, only 36 representing 66% have health ministers with
backgrounds in the medical field either as a practitioner or a professor. With
their combined experience, we can safely assert that African countries with
health minister with medical backgrounds will have enough understanding of
their health systems and how they can fix the challenges emanating.
Borrowing from the fact that a lot of
African traditions also believe in that tender, loving and caring nature of
women, I also discovered that, only 14 women occupy the position of health
ministers across the whole continent. These counties are Angola, Burkina Faso,
Comoros, Congo Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia,
South Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda. Accepting the empirical fact that
women are better managers than men, one wonders why there are not a lot more
women health ministers across Africa.
As this is a testing period for all health
ministers who are on the frontline of beating this global pandemic, I'm sitting
looking at the result of my research and wondering ‘will these individuals be
able to deal with COVID19 now that the cases on the continent are skyrocketing.
Will they politicize everything they do, as usual, or will they abandon us by
resigning in the eleventh hour. Worst still, maybe they'll seek support from
the USA, Europe or Asia as African leaders are known for. Ironically, most of
these 'developed' countries are more hard hit with this pandemic than Africa.
So how are they going to help us when they need the resources most now?
With a look at how political leaders are
appointed, I believe that as Africans, we must begin to question our leaders to
become accountable to us beyond the ballot box and must ensure they are first
leaders in their field of experience before being politicians or we will
continue to complain of the model of leadership on the continent which mostly
is characterised by the idiomatic expression, “square peg in a round hole”.
To read profiles of all African health
ministers, visit www.princeakpah.com/2020healthministers/
Author: Prince Akpah. MD of Avance Media
No comments