We may end up losing all our experts to Covid-19 – Dr Asiedu Sarpong

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Pharmacist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has expressed concern over the number of resource persons that have succumbed to Covid-19.

Kwame Sarpong Asiedu fears Ghana may end up losing most of its (few) resource persons to the pandemic if proper measures are not put in place to manage the situation.

“We may not be losing people in large numbers like it is happening in the United States but we are losing a lot in terms of quality and that should bother us,” he said.

He made the comments Saturday on JoyNews’ Newsfile where he stated that the trend may leave the country with a badly damaged human resource capacity.

“I’m looking at all these people who are passing; directors of companies, chief operating officers and I’m asking myself ‘do we realize that we are going to end up, possibly after this pandemic is over, bequeathing to the next generation, a society where knowledge and human resource have been badly hurt and damaged?

“And we may end up having to train some people in certain particular areas from scratch and that breaks my heart,” he said.

His greatest concern was with the fact that the circumstances under which some of these personalities lost their lives could have been avoided.

“If you hear the circumstance under which certain people passed; sometimes [the deaths occur] because simple medication can’t be found and this breaks my heart,” he said.

His contribution formed part of discussions on how Ghana can effectively manage its Covid-19 situation.

During the show, Dr Asiedu Sarpong suggested to the general public not to limit the fight against the pandemic to government alone as each citizen has a role to play.

He said despite the limited resources being used to combat the virus, everyone “needs to be responsible for his or her actions.”

Meanwhile Ghana continues to record significant daily spikes in the Covid-19 positive cases.

As of February 6, 2021, the country’s active case count stood at 6,095.

The country’s death toll has also shot up to 449. In 2020, the country lost some resourced persons to the pandemic including health professionals, chief executive officers, professors, among others.

Currently, quite a significant number of resource persons have succumbed to the virus even before the end of the second month of the year 2021.

It will be recalled that in 2020, news broke about the demise of NPP big gun and CEO of the Forestry Commission, Sir John.

Also, Associate Director of Students Life and Engagement at Ashesi University, Frances Awua-Kyerematen, Head of Human Resource at the Prudential Bank, Naa Adoley Ankrah, are all persons that are reported to have died as a result of contracting the virus.

Dr. Asiedu Sarpong said looking at the numbers, there’s cause for alarm since the country may (in the near future) end up spending more resources training persons to attain the level of knowledge and skills the deceased experts have.