A GNA feature by Anthony Bells Kafui Kanyi

Ho, Nov. 18, GNA - The departed souls of expectant mothers of Leklebi-Worgbe and their unborn children have missed this day. They died in the process of having babies as there was no medical help. No clinics. The clinics were far away downhill.

These women certainly would have wished to witness the commissioning of a clinic at Leklebi-Worgbe, on the peak of the Togoland Atakora Mountain, but unfortunately could not live to meet the day.

Since the beginning of time, uncountable number of expectant mothers in the community had lost their lives sometimes together with their babies. This is largely because of the absence of a health facility. A large number of women in the community do not know what ante-natal or post-natal care is. The few, who can cope with the bother, travel to the district capital, Hohoe, to stay with relatives to access healthcare when they are about due for labour.

The poor majority, however, have no option than to either go through labour perhaps at the farm or in the forest, while looking for firewood or at the stream in search of water for the household. Pregnant women with complications are carried on makeshift hammocks down the Mountain en route to Leklebi-Duga, the nearest clinic about six kilometres away, with many returning without their babies or dying with them.

The good people there are bonded by a strong communal spirit. Anytime someone was seriously sick, it meant no farm job until the sick was got on the hammock down the mountain to the Clinic at Lekleb-Duga or far away Hohoe Government Hospital.

Quite a number of pregnant women have delivered babies on rocks, in caves and on leaves while descending the mountain to the nearest clinic. It is for this reason that women and children, especially of Leklebi-Worgbe remain grateful to Mr Suur Maj Zonnveld, Chief Executive of Ghana Support, an international non-governmental organization, for building a modern 18,000-Euro clinic on top of the mountain to bring healthcare to the doorstep of people in the community.

Apparently, Ghana Support was moved by continuing reports of women and children under-five losing their lives on the Mountain on regular basis. Togbe Obiri Joseph, Chief of the community, told the GNA that many women in the area had developed knee and waist pains and that young men usually carried their colleagues and some women who developed fractures the over another mountain into the Republic of Togo for cure. The community could therefore not hesitate to offer communal labour, including carrying several bags of cement and other building materials on the head from the foot of the mountain for the project. The result was the Clinic, the only cement block structure in the village.

The only way to the community of 500 people is a tortuous footpath with rocks and big stones serving as a flight of stairs. No vehicle goes there. One has to pass through cocoa farms crossing a number of rivers to make it to the community. The community becomes inaccessible during the rainy season, so most politicians shy away from the area during the rainy season with a few making it to the top of the mountain during the dry season. It takes between one and two hours to reach the community, trekking from the foot of the mountain. The streams meandering through the rocks and caves serve as the sources of drinking water with the sun and moon providing light for day and night respectively. The community cannot boast of any social amenity perhaps by virtue of where nature placed it - on top of a mountain between two nations, Ghana and Togo. The only basic school in the community collapsed several years ago due to the unwillingness of teachers to accept postings to the community. The birth of this clinic, however, has brought a fresh wind of happiness and life into the community. For some time now, women especially, have been in celebration mood with reports of some feigning pregnancies and ill health so as to have a feel of the facility and healthcare in general having missed such a care since birth. Mansah, 49, a banana seller, who said she was pregnant, said having had two children under very difficult circumstances, this one in her belly would begin a fresh round of child births at the new facility. As she spoke, her husband, a cocoa and coffee farmer applauded.

Some children have made the clinic environment their second home and are almost always found there admiring the facility. At a short ceremony in Ho to hand over the project to the Ghana Health Service, Mr Joseph Amenowode, Volta Regional Minister and Member of Parliament for the area, said the project was timely as the country was making great efforts at achieving Millennium Development Goal 4 and 5 by reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Certainly, it is timely against the background where figures of maternal and child deaths in the community are not recorded. The certainty is the many cases of pregnant women and children under-five years die at the farms, forests and at the streams and are buried a few hours after their death.

Funerals are mostly not organized for these people because of traditional beliefs that a pregnant woman who died with her child or children who died before attaining five years deserved no funerals. Though the celebration is reaching a very high pitch with men joining the fray, with drumming and singing on special days in honour of the facility ahead of its official commissioning in December, the party will be incomplete if children of school-going age in the community continue to be out of school. These children have the right to education and need to be given the opportunity.

The classroom pavilion constructed several years ago is wasting in the heart of the mountain community. A few children are enrolled in a nearby French school in the Republic of Togo while the majority help their parents on the farm with the importance of education being lost on them. Only a handful travel several kilometres down the mountain to nearby village schools, mostly barefooted and in tattered clothes. The chief said though the community tried to make teachers posted there feel very comfortable, they did not stay for a term before saying goodbye. This is a great challenge to the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Hohoe Municipal Assembly to re-open the basic school and ensure that teachers posted there stay and teach children.

Already, neighbouring Togo has taken the lead in ensuring that schools in those difficult to reach areas are operational. Our dear nation must not fail its future leaders and force them into schools in another man's land. Once again, our institutions must work! Checks indicate that schools in the Republic of Togo side of most border towns are doing better than those of Ghana.

It is therefore essential that stakeholders invest in those areas, organize incentive packages to keep teachers and health workers in those areas so that people in those communities could have improvement in quality of life and also to deter young ones from migrating from those serene environments to the urban areas in search of non-available jobs. With the necessary basic social amenities, Leklebi-Worgbe with its natural settings and environment, which they themselves have described as "Heaven", could become an enviable tourist destination where foreign and local tourists would want to stay for some days to have a feel of the way of life of the local people on the mountain.

Women of Worgbe, permission is granted to continue to celebrate the birth of a long awaited clinic. Let the drums sound and bells ring for it is a celebration of life.

For now, you and your children would not die needlessly because your health needs would be attended to without stress and hopefully your basic school and other amenities would follow. 18 Nov. 10