Speak Out December high low res draft 2017

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18 Speak Out December 2017
Out & About
COMMUNICATION AND SWALLOWING difficulties present
enormous challenges to individuals and their families. These
challenges are magnified a thousand-fold in a country such
as Ghana, where services for communication and swallowing
difficulties are extremely rare. In Ghana, there is a team of speech
pathologists working hard to make the needed changes and
improve services. The Australian Government and Australian
speech pathologists are providing small but meaningful
contributions to this change, which will slowly help to shift the
landscape for people with communication and swallowing
difficulties in Ghana.
Can you imagine having only seven speech pathologists to
provide services to the whole population of Australia? For families
in Ghana, that is their reality. Finding a speech pathologist, or any
type of service for communication difficulties is extremely difficult.
Families travel enormous distances for services. At present there
are seven speech pathologists in the country, providing services
to a population of 25 million people. Only three of these speech
pathologists are Ghanaian, trained in London. The remainder
are foreigners, living and working in Ghana for various reasons,
commonly on short placements of one-year or less.
In response to the need for improved services for communication
disability, Ghana has slowly been investing in the development
of the SLT profession. How to best start local training for speech
pathology has been the topic of discussion in Ghana for a
number of years. The Ministry of Health seeded the profession by
providing scholarships for Ghanaians to train as SLTs in London.
The return of these graduates (Ms Josephine Bampoe and Mr
Clement Amponsah), their employment at the University of Ghana,
alongside Ghanaian speech pathologist (Ms Nana Akua Owusu)
and the addition of an Australian speech pathologist on the team
(Ms Karen Wylie, resident in Ghana) meant that Ghana finally had
the potential to consider training speech pathologists. In 2016,
after three years in planning, the University of Ghana accepted
its first group of Masters of Speech and Language Therapy
students. Twelve students are now more than halfway through
their degree. The programme at the University of Ghana is locally
developed and delivered, and unique to the culture and context in
Ghana. It focuses on both meeting the needs of individuals with
communication disability, as well as prevention, early intervention,
community awareness of communication disability and working
with self-help groups.
During the planning phases, the team identified the need for
support from outside Ghana for teaching specialised subject
matter, and supporting clinical block placements. The team
recognised that costs associated with volunteering was a barrier
to securing the volunteers they required.
Developing the speech pathology
profession in Ghana
AUSTRALIAN SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS ARE ASSISTING THEIR GHANIAN COUNTER-PARTS TO
SHIFT THE LANDSCAPE FOR PEOPLE WITH COMMUNICATION AND SWALLOWING DIFFICULTIES.