Blog Description

This past summer I went on a 6 week medical observational internship in Ghana, Africa with the Abusua Foundation (an NGO run out of Ghana). I went to gain experience in a hospital and see if medicine is really what I want to do with my life. I lived in the small village of Kwaprow, in the coastal fishing town of Cape Coast. I worked in two hospitals: Cape Coast District (smaller, less modern)and Central Regional (larger, more modern). I also taught English and Science to young children of my village at the BCL after-school program.

While there, I wrote a journal about my experiences in the hospital, teaching at the after-school program, and general life in Ghana. Since being home, some people have expressed an interest in reading the journal, so I figured the easiest thing to do was to post the journal here for anyone who is interested in reading it. Any patient names mentioned have been changed to ensure confidentiality.

It should be noted that because this is a blog site, the postings are in reverse order of when they occurred (which I can't change). So, to read the entries in order you should start from the oldest posts at the bottom of this page.

About Ghana
Ghana is a coastal country in West Africa. The national language of Ghana is English. The capital of Ghana is Accra. Ghana is considered the safest country in Africa (according to global peace index; see Global Peace Index map at the bottom). In terms of development, Ghana is ranked in the middle tier of African countries and 152 out of 182 in the world by the Human Development Index.

Monetary exchange:
$1.40 CAN = 1 Cedi, 1 Cedi = 100 Pesewas





July 29, 2010


Today at the hospital, I returned to kids ward to visit some nurses I had previously befriended.  After being in the male and female wards for the past few weeks, I find the kids ward is the most emotionally challenging ward to be in.  There are always a lot of very sick children in the kids ward, which is difficult to see.  Also, I cannot help but imagine the kids of the after-school program becoming sick and ending up there, which makes the kids ward even more difficult to be in.
The children’s ward holds some unique rewards, however.  Unlike many adults, children show emotion easily and can easily be cheered up.  For example, after seeing me, the mother of one boy with third degree burns all over his body (due to hot soup) sang the Obruni song to get the child to stop crying. The Obruni song is sung to white strangers by Ghanaian children all over.  The song goes:
Bruni! How are you?
I’m fine, thank you!
The child immediately stopped crying and waved at me with a smile on his face, even though he was still covered in burns from head to toe.  It was nice to see the child so easily cheered up. 

At BCL, Kojo asked me if I could teach Science, in addition to English, to my classes.  We worked out a schedule in which I will teach Science two days out of the week and English the remaining three.

Back at the house in Cape Coast, Dorota, a clinical psychologist from Poland, told me about her placement at the Ankful Psychiatry hospital in Cape Coast. Ankful is a private psychiatric facility, in which admitted patients must pay or have family members pay for their stay. The hospital specializes in treating marijuana addictiction, which Dorota has been asked to take part in by giving psychiatric counselling to the patients. Dorota says marijuana use is treated like a mental illness in Ghana. Upon admittance the patient is immediately given anti-psychotics, such as chlorpromazine or diazepam, regardless of whether they are showing any psychotic systems or not. Patients are kept on these drugs indefinitely. There are no qualified psychiatrists associated with the facility; instead a person with only a BSc in psychology as well as student clinical psychiatrists direct the patient programs. Dorota says there are no treatment plans for any of the patients; instead patients are just given tasks to past the time. Dorota thinks the program is used more as a place to keep marijuana addicted people out of the way (because marijuana use is really looked down upon here), if the family members can afford to pay.
Dorota also told me about the infamous African “Prayer Camps”, which she has been hearing about at the Psychiatric hospital.  Prayer camps are very prominent in Ghana, with some at the hospital saying there are as many as 200 in the Central region of Ghana alone. In these camps, patients suffering from a range of illnesses, including both physical and psychological illnesses, are apparently held in prison-like conditions while prayed over.  Apparently the prayer camps are fairly welcoming to visitors, so we are going to try to visit a camp while we are here.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)