Every day, my work sits at the intersection of two realities: treating patients in the NHS, while strengthening healthcare in Ghana.
I am an NHS consultant obstetrician and foetal medicine specialist. I am also British-Ghanaian, and president of the Ghanaian Doctors and Dentists Association UK, a diaspora network of clinicians.
That dual perspective has made one thing clear to me: as aid budgets shrink, we are being forced to rethink what actually sustains health systems, and who does.
In the NHS, international health workers are not the exception. They are its beating heart. The skills and expertise that sustain the health service have been built and developed across many countries, including those now facing increasing pressure on their own services.
At the same time, many of us remain actively engaged in care beyond the UK.
Through diaspora organisations like mine, clinicians contribute time, skills and resources — from training to specialist services, working in partnership with local institutions.
On a recent visit to Ghana, I saw first-hand the urgent need for better maternal care across several hospitals — where access to timely scanning can mean the difference between life and death for both mother and child.
It was a stark reminder of why diaspora-led work matters. From the UK, I have been working with colleagues at the University of Ghana Medical Centre through virtual teaching. Later this year, I will return to deliver hands-on training, working directly with clinicians and sharing knowledge in both directions.
This is part of a wider pattern — diaspora clinicians contributing in many ways, from stepping up during Covid-19 to delivering health outreach to Ghanaian communities here in the UK, bridging care across continents.
With global health at a turning point, this work could not be more important.
Over the past year, reductions in aid, including from the UK, have directly impacted countries like Ghana. Recent allocations confirm the scale of this shift, with UK bilateral aid to Africa set to fall by 56 per cent. The effects are already being felt: fewer outreach services, stretched training programmes, and growing pressure on healthcare workers.
Against this troubling backdrop, diaspora contributions — whether through money sent home to families or the work of clinician networks like mine — are a vital lifeline. While they cannot and should not replace government investment, they bring together funding, skills and trusted networks to help sustain care as other support falls away.
This is not peripheral work. It is the blueprint for how modern health partnerships must function, shifting from top-down, aid-dependent models to approaches led and shaped locally.
In May, the UK will host the Global Partnerships Conference, where governments and civil society will meet to consider the future of development cooperation. If that conversation is to be meaningful, it must be led by those with lived experience of the systems in question — including diaspora — with a real say in how decisions are made and resources are directed.
Because ultimately, organisations like mine are already doing the work — building relationships, caring for patients and strengthening services in ways that are often overlooked. We are not a temporary fix. We are the foundation.
The question is whether that reality is recognised — and whether diaspora are treated as partners, not just contributors, in building a more just and sustainable future for global health.
From my experience working across both the NHS and alongside Ghana’s health system, the message is clear: Partnership is not optional, it is essential — and it must be shaped by those already bridging the gap.
Dr Jacqueline Bamfo is a consultant obstetrician and foetal Medicine Specialist, and is President of the Ghanaian Doctors and Dentists Association UK, a member of the Action for Global Health network
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project