Ghana has only 25 consultant neurosurgeons serving a population of more than 33 million people, a ratio of one specialist per approximately 1.24 million people, according to a peer-reviewed study co-authored by leading Ghanaian neurosurgeon Dr. Teddy Totimeh and published in a medical journal, findings that place the country among the most undersupplied nations in the world for emergency brain and spinal surgery.
The study, which surveyed the entire neurosurgical workforce across Ghana’s hospitals, found that almost half of Ghana’s population does not have access to a hospital with a neurosurgeon in their region, and that while 82 percent of neurosurgical centres have computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, most lack neurointensivists or neurological intensive care units, with no such unit existing anywhere in the country. In the operating theatre, most neurosurgeons had access to a high-speed drill but only 64 percent had surgical microscopes and just 36 percent had endoscopic sets, tools considered standard in modern brain surgery globally.
The data provides the clinical foundation for concerns Dr. Totimeh has raised publicly this month, following national outrage over the February 6 death of 29-year-old engineer Charles Amissah, who was struck by a hit-and-run driver at the Nkrumah Circle Overpass in Accra and was turned away by three hospitals, including Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, before he died. Ghana currently has only 0.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people, far below the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended minimum of five.
Dr. Totimeh has described the situation as structurally predetermined. With approximately 80 percent of public hospital budgets consumed by staff wages, the funds available for imaging equipment, intensive care infrastructure, and operating theatre upgrades remain critically limited. The result is a system in which patients with strokes, head injuries, and spinal emergencies are routinely transferred between hospitals, adding delays that frequently determine survival.
Dr. Totimeh noted that his own private practice in Accra operates from what he described as the only privately owned building in the city where an MRI scanner, CT scanner, intensive care unit, and operating theatres exist within a single footprint, a situation he called a serious indictment for 2026. In the public sector, that level of integrated infrastructure does not exist in any facility outside the country’s two main teaching hospitals, and even there, equipment downtime and bed shortages remain persistent.
The study identified the key barriers to timely neurosurgical care in Ghana as the lack of proper equipment, poor maintenance of existing equipment, a shortage of trained critical care physicians and anaesthesiologists, and financial barriers facing patients, many of whom are either uninsured or enrolled in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) but still face significant out-of-pocket costs for neurosurgical procedures.
Ghana loses a disproportionately high number of people of working age to road traffic accidents and strokes each year, two conditions for which neurosurgical response time is among the most critical determinants of survival. Dr. Totimeh has noted that Ghana has one of the highest road traffic accident mortality rates in the world, with young, economically active people dying every day because the country’s trauma and stroke response systems remain underdeveloped.
Calls for a dedicated national neurosurgical infrastructure plan, including regional trauma centres with integrated imaging and intensive care capability, have grown louder among medical specialists following the Amissah case. No such plan has been announced by the Ministry of Health as of Tuesday, February 24, 2026.
