During a recent conversation, she paused, almost confused, and asked a question that stayed with me.
“Why are people congratulating me and showing so much concern as though I’ve won a major election? I just gave birth. It was not a major surgical procedure. It was just a child’s birth.”
She had delivered her baby abroad, a year after returning there following a long stay in Ghana after her father’s burial. The messages had come in quickly. Congratulations. Prayers. Relief. Gratitude. For her, it felt excessive. Dramatic, even.
Where she lived, childbirth was treated as what it should be. A normal, expected part of life. Something to be handled with care, yes, but not something that attracts the kind of emotional outpouring reserved for surviving a disaster.
I understood her confusion.
And I also understood something she did not.
She was not being ungrateful. She was not dismissing God’s mercy. She was reacting from a place where systems work, where care is reliable, where outcomes are expected, not feared.
So I explained.
I told her about our reality. Not in theory, but in experience. I shared stories, mine and others. I spoke slowly, carefully, trying not to sound exaggerated.
When I finished, she paused again.
Then she asked, quietly, “How do humans still live in Ghana?”
I did not have a complicated answer.
I simply said, “Because it is our reality.”
The truth is difficult to say, but it must be said.
Health care in Ghana, in many places, feels less like a system and more like survival by grace.
Yes, there are good people within it. I have met doctors, nurses, and health workers who carry their duty with professionalism and care. People who go beyond what is required. People who remind you that things can be different.
But I have also encountered the other side.
And it is not rare.
My mother had some health challenges recently. That was when I moved from hearing stories to living them.
What I saw unsettled me.
From medications that were wrongly administered, to prescriptions that raised questions, to a system where you are sometimes left to wonder whether you are receiving care or navigating confusion.
There were instances where we were asked to buy medications that were never administered. No explanation. No accountability.
Just silence.
One moment stays with me.
It was past visiting hours, and we were preparing to leave the ward. A nurse on duty spoke harshly to my younger brother, insisting he leave immediately. At the same time, she mentioned a medication we needed to buy.
My brother, calm but firm, explained that the medication was not on the prescription. The hospital operated electronically. If the doctor had prescribed it, it would appear at the pharmacy when we mentioned the patient’s name.
Still, he was willing to buy it, if properly prescribed.
After a few exchanges, it became clear.
The medication was not for our mother.
It was for another patient.
Even then, we were still willing to help.
But what followed was worse.
We realised that some medications we had already purchased had not been administered at all. When my brother asked why, the response was chilling.
“I don’t care,” she said.
He pressed further. What if this delay could cost her life?
Her response came without emotion.
“It will not be the first. It will not be the last.”
There was no anger in her voice. No regret. Just a statement, as though life and death had become routine.
I remember the silence that followed.
And I remember thinking, this cannot be normal.
But for many, it is.
Another memory.
When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she was prescribed the wrong medication. By habit, she reads labels carefully. Something did not feel right. She called a doctor friend, who immediately told her not to take it.
That decision may have saved her.
On the night she went into labour, she called for the nurses on duty.
They were angry.
Not concerned. Not urgent. Angry.
Because their sleep had been interrupted.
At that moment, bringing life into the world became an inconvenience to those meant to protect it.
These are not isolated experiences.
They are patterns.
And when you live in such a system long enough, something happens.
You begin to adjust.
You begin to see survival as success.
You begin to celebrate what should be normal.
You begin to treat basic care as a privilege.
So when someone gives birth and lives, we celebrate.
Not because we do not understand medicine.
But because we understand risk.
Because here, a lack of beds can cost a life.
A wrong medication can change everything.
A moment of negligence can become permanent loss.
So forgive us if we sound dramatic.
Forgive us if we celebrate loudly.
It is not because we do not know what is normal.
It is because we know what is not guaranteed.
So yes, to my friend, I say this.
We are not exaggerating.
We are responding to a reality you have been fortunate not to experience.
We are grateful. Deeply grateful.
Grateful not only for life, but for surviving a system that too often fails the very people it is meant to protect.
And perhaps that is the most painful part.
That what should be ordinary has become extraordinary.
That what should be guaranteed has become uncertain.
That what should be a system has become something we navigate with hope, fear, and prayer.
Thank God my mother is still alive.
And in a place where survival often depends on more than the system itself, sometimes that is the only sentence that matters.