The Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has provided further reasons for which the country should be considering a legislation on organ donations soon.

Speaking with the host of The Lowdown on GhanaWeb TV, Daniel Oduro, as GhanaWeb advances its campaign on the subject matter, the presidential advisor said that the advancements that have been made in healthcare should enforce that.

He explained, for instance, that in Ghana, there have been many strides made in the healthcare sector of the country, yet the only thing that is holding back its full implementation is a legislation.

“If you realise, we are developing in our health systems. Some time ago, we didn’t have enough ophthalmologists in the country who were well-trained in some specialties to be able to transplant cornea. There are a lot of people who are blind, and from what they tell us, a high percentage of the blind people are from cornea scarring, and if you replace it with a piece of cornea, the person gains sight again.

“We train a lot of ophthalmologists in that – I know there are some people who have been trained at Komfo Anokye, Cape Coast, Korle-Bu, and I think even in Tema or Tamale. So, they can do cornea transplants but we don’t have a bank… to be able to do a transplant, first we’d have to have an act of parliament or legislative instrument guiding it because you’d have to be very careful that you don’t have people harvesting others with organs and taking them out and all sort of things,” he said.

Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare also explained the various stages of transplantation that are required, and the progresses the country has made in those respects.

He also stated that there are people currently being trained to also under liver transplantations in Ghana, although a legislation to effectively do that is not in place in the country.

“So, first, we have to know the donor who has been well-educated and primed that he is going to donate this, the time he or she wants it to be donated, and then you also have to take care of the person who is donating and the person who is receiving. And then you’d have to get the people who are trained with the equipment and everything else, which slowly, we are building up in all aspects because you can do cornea transplant in Ghana, you can also do kidney transplant in Ghana, and even heart transplant in Ghana.

“There are also people who are also training to do liver transplant. These are diseases which are killing people but if we get it well done and transplanted, since there are people who are losing their lives through road accidents and the like… and even, we are doing also fertility. It’s also taking tissues, so, it’s organs, tissues, cells – anything you want to take from a human body and store, there should be a legislative instrument to guide it, so that people don’t start abusing it and selling it, and if we are not even careful, as people say, people can be grabbed and forcefully remove the organs, so there should be laws guiding all these things,” he explained.

Watch the full interview on GhanaWeb TV with Daniel Oduro below:






Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.

AE/WA