When Someone’s Right Is Deemed Wrong By Another: The Case Of The Ongoing Nurses’ Strike In Ghana
In every democratic society, rights are foundational, but they often collide in moments of crisis.
In Ghana, the ongoing nurses’ strike has brought this tension into sharp relief. What some see as a legitimate exercise of labour rights, others view as a threat to public welfare.
The strike has stirred debate not just about wages and working conditions, but about fairness, responsibility, and the state of healthcare in the country.
Nurses across Ghana have taken to the picket lines to demand improved salaries, timely payment of arrears, and better working conditions, demands that have persisted for years with minimal response.
These concerns are not exaggerated. Many nurses work long shifts in overcrowded wards, with inadequate resources, all while earning salaries that often do not reflect the magnitude of their responsibilities.
In this context, striking becomes a last resort, not a rejection of duty, but a call for structural change.
Yet to others, particularly patients and their families, such strikes feel like an abandonment.
In rural and underserved areas, where healthcare access is already limited, the absence of nurses can be life-threatening.
Critics argue that healthcare, unlike other professions, cannot afford disruption. The moral weight of a nurse’s duty to care is high, and for some, walking away from the bedside, even temporarily, feels ethically troubling.
This is where the conflict lies: when the exercise of one’s rights is perceived as the denial of another’s.
Nurses have every right to demand fair treatment. But the public, too, has a right to expect access to timely, quality healthcare. Balancing these rights requires more than rhetoric; it requires political will and structural reform.
The Ghanaian health system, like many in the region, has long grappled with underinvestment, brain drain, and bureaucratic delays.
When nurses strike, they expose the cracks in the system—but they also risk being scapegoated for problems that precede their protest.
The danger is that their demands are reduced to noise, rather than heard as a necessary alarm.
What is urgently needed is a shift in how we frame the issue. Rather than asking whether nurses are right or wrong to strike, the real question is: Why are they still forced to choose between their well-being and their duty to patients?
If nurses felt heard, valued, and fairly compensated, the strike would not be necessary. Their action, far from being a threat, could be seen as a courageous stand for a more just and humane health system—for everyone.
Government response must go beyond temporary appeasement or threats of sanctions. Dialogue must be sincere, solutions long-term, and outcomes equitable. If we treat nurses as essential workers, then we must also treat their concerns as essential issues.
In the end, when someone’s right is deemed wrong by another, it is a sign of deeper systemic failure.
The nurses’ strike in Ghana is not just about salary, it is about respect, sustainability, and the kind of health system we want to build.
We owe it to the nurses, and to ourselves, to listen carefully and act decisively.
Kasise Ricky Peprah
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