In Kwabeng, in Ghana’s Eastern Region, younger women and men dressed in mud-splattered boots cross from side to side on motorbikes and tricycles from the principle highway to the trails that cross deep into the wooded area. Around them are acres of fruiting cocoa bushes; swathes of thick inexperienced forests that reach up hills so far as the attention can see. But nature isn’t those women and men’s fast worry. Gold is. Illegal gold mining, to be precise, referred to as galamsey.

The unlawful gold pits convey wealth to Ghana, without delay using over 1,000,000 small-scale miners and accounting for 35% of the rustic’s gold manufacturing. With international gold costs having surged from round $1,800 consistent with ounce in 2020 to over $4,000 in 2025, those unlawful pits are a large spice up for Ghana’s financial environment, and there are rising issues that the federal government is sacrificing the surroundings to beef up financial signs and spice up gold reserves.

But this wealth comes on the expense of well being, in additional techniques than one. Some of unlawful mining’s adverse well being affects are well-reported, such because the contamination chance to native communities’ water, with galamasey having polluted at least 60% of Ghana’s rivers. Yet there’s one in particular damaging impact this is nonetheless little identified: the killing of the medicinal crops that 70% of Ghanaians rely on, in particular the ones Ghanaians who can’t find the money for fashionable healthcare.

Per a Ghana Statistical Service survey in 2019, 51.7% of Ghanaians search consultations at non-public well being amenities as in opposition to 45.7% in public amenities. The favouring of personal services and products is attributed to the insufficient public well being infrastructure, amongst others.

“When you destroy a forest, you destroy a pharmacy,” stated Awula Serwah, a attorney and coordinator of the Eco-conscious Citizens environmentalist staff. “What people don’t seem to realise is that as a consequence of illegal mining, the peasant farmers are losing their livelihood. The fishermen are losing their livelihood.”

One gold-mining trail in Kwabeng is going previous Farida Mohammed’s house. The excavators are round 600 metres away; at sure occasions of the day, she will be able to listen their hum as they claw in the course of the earth looking for gold.

Mohammed is a well-liked conventional healer within the district, identified for her use of medicinal crops to regard bone fractures. Mohammed inherited her calling, she advised openDemocracy, and a very powerful plant she makes use of in her remedy is understood in the neighborhood as Kwaebesin.

Once extensively to be had within the forests round her house, the plant identified for dashing up bone formation and mobile activation has disappeared within the ultimate seven years as unlawful gold mining intensified.

“Just behind my home, we could find the medicinal plants we needed,” stated the nervous healer. “But because of illegal mining, they are gone. The areas we were used to finding the plants were cleared.”

Serwah of the Eco-conscious Citizens believes the unlawful gold mining is striking Ghana “on the verge of an ecological catastrophe”. Yet successive governments were gradual to behave. President John Mahama used to be returned to energy in January of this yr after his predecessor, Nana Akufo-Addo, confronted grievance for a loss of urgency in safeguarding the surroundings from unlawful mining.

Before the election, Mahama promised to scrap a legislation permitting mining in wooded area reserves, however his govt didn’t act for nearly 11 months till, underneath emerging drive from environmental activists, it in any case began the method to revoke the legislation and convened a unique discussion board to talk about the unlawful mining downside.

Serwah attended the discussion board and left unhappy with the federal government’s posturing. “It was a good PR exercise. But did it answer our questions? Not really,” she stated. She is amongst a bunch of activists tough a state of emergency in spaces suffering from unlawful mining, arguing that the wide-reaching devastation justifies this excessive call for.

Ghana has round 7.9 million hectares of wooded area quilt, which makes up round 35% of its overall land space. But the rustic additionally has one of the vital very best ranges of deforestation on the earth, having misplaced round 25% of its tree quilt between 2001 and 2004 because the mechanisation of galamsey took form. The loss has greater lately, with the United Nations Development Programme caution in 2023 that Ghana is now shedding 135,000 hectares of wooded area quilt every year – identical to 189,000 soccer pitches.

These forests are house to no less than 1,360 species of medicinal crops for number one well being care, which rural communities throughout Ghana are stated to have gathered wisdom of. The crops deal with all kinds of diseases, together with fever, malaria, wounds, gastrointestinal illness, numbness, high blood pressure, coughs, gonorrhea, syphilis, pores and skin illnesses, ulcers, rheumatism, bronchial asthma, and fibroids.

There might but be extra undiscovered crops that may deal with extra illnesses, in step with Dr Gladys Schwinger, a botany lecturer on the University of Ghana. “We don’t know half of what we have in our forests, and now we may never know because they have been destroyed by galamsey.”

Deforestation for mines alters finely tuned microclimates, which makes it unimaginable for sure crops to breed or develop again after they’re destroyed, as is the case with the kwaebesin Mohammed as soon as sourced from the forests of Kwabeng.

Schwinger explains: “When the topsoil is removed, anything new can grow to succeed the plants. You won’t have the original vegetation that was there.”

Ghana’s Centre for Plant Medicine Research is the state establishment accountable for natural medication analysis and victory. But useful resource constraints have avoided it from making conservation interventions in spaces suffering from unlawful mining, in step with Michael Akuamoah-Boateng, the centre’s head of plant victory.

Akuamoah-Boateng advised openDemocracy that the centre is creating arboretums and medicinal gardens to begin planting and protective medicinal crops and convey natural medicine. It has 3 such gardens in Ghana’s Eastern Region, however to fulfill the urgency of the losses, the centre says it’s running in opposition to an association the place it may well utilise wooded area reserves.

“What we are now trying to push for is that the Forestry Commission give us concessions,” Akuamoah-Boateng defined. “They can give us a portion, and we can cultivate the medicinal plants, which we can use as a form of conservation, and we can also harvest sustainably.”

The Environmental Protection Authority, which the federal government granted expanded powers to give a boost to the preservation of ecosystems and biodiversity in January 2025, advised openDemocracy that the medicinal plant losses weren’t in particular on its radar. “This is one area we have not really paid attention to,” stated Hobson Agyapong, the authority’s primary programme officer.

Despite this, Agyapong showed Schwinger’s fears that sure ecosystems were completely altered. “If you go to most of the artisanal small-scale mining zones, almost all those original ecosystems are extinct,” he stated.

While there aren’t any explicit teams advocating for medicinal plant conservation, environmental activists are not directly concerned thru their paintings. The marketing of the Jema Anti-Galamsey Advocacy staff within the Western Region, Reverend Father Joseph Blay, advised openDemocracy that the anti-illegal mining activism he began a decade in the past has helped to make sure his group nonetheless has get entry to to its medicinal crops.

“We formed our own community task force to police the forests and protect the natural resources from illegal miners,” Blay stated. “We [still] have a forest that is reserved for medicine, game and other things. The medicinal plants are there free for us because our land is pure.”

A hefty worth being paid

For purchasers of conventional healer Farida Mohammed, her plant medication isn’t just efficient however the one selection they’ve, given the prohibitive price of hospital therapy in Ghana.

The healer used to be the saving grace of 31-year-old Edward Amoako when he broke bones in his thigh in a bus crash previous this yr. He used to be rushed to a sanatorium through first responders, however says he knew it could now not be a practical possibility for him. “The hospital mentioned a price for care I couldn’t afford; about 20,000 Ghanaian cedis ($1,823),” he stated. While Amoako continues to be therapeutic and wishes crutches to assist with motion, his situation has advanced considerably since receiving care from Mohammed.

Prosper Teye, 23, additionally became to Mohammed’s treatments in a final determined try to save his proper leg after a gnarly bike crash. “Doctors said they were going to amputate my leg,” he stated. “After the road crash, my leg was basically falling off.” His agree with in Mohammed’s natural treatments is paying off up to now, and with rehab going effectively, he expects to make a complete restoration.

These days, regardless that, Mohammed’s care could also be turning into costlier. The destruction of native medicinal crops method healers are being pressured to shop for them from industrious middlemen who supply them from very far off spaces of Ghana and even in another country. But no person can inform how lengthy this association can ultimate.

Mohammed will have to now purchase her kwaebesin from over 600 kilometres away in northwest Ghana for roughly GHS2,000 ($182) a sack – a price she passes directly to sufferers with a lot remorseful about, charging on reasonable GHS200 ($18) for as soon as loose remedy.

“[The illegal mining] really hurt us. We’re poor in this community. It may get to a time where if you break your leg, you will have to go to the hospital and pay up,” Mohammed lamented.

At the Centre for Plant Medicine Research, shortage could also be using up its prices of manufacturing treatments. “We also buy plants from outside [Ghana], and we are having challenges getting some plants because people are saying the galamsey is destroying the trees,” says Akuamoah-Boateng. “Almost every year, suppliers come back for price renegotiations because the things are getting scarcer and expensive.”

He singles out two as soon as widespread crops which might be now not simple to search out: ageratum conyzoides, a foul-smelling plant with ovate leaves utilized in treating over 20 diseases, together with bone fractures, epilepsy and leprosy, and desmodium adscendens, which is used for problems starting from bronchial asthma to even psychosis.

Perhaps worse than greater prices is the worry that what little medicinal crops stay might in fact be poisoning those that use them because of the heavy metals used for processing gold seeping into the soil close by. Areas with unlawful mining have increased ranges of mercury, cyanide and arsenic within the surroundings.

A analysis paper within the Journal of Chemistry discovered heavy metals in 20 medicinal crops within the mining the town of Obuasi, in southern Ghana. Bioaccumulation through the years from again and again drinking such crops may reason neurological issues, cardiovascular problems, and congenital defects.

Herbal medicine is examined for protection through the Food and Drugs Authority. But the uncooked medicinal crops being bought face little scrutiny. Akuamoah-Boateng warns: “If the people are getting the herbs from a galamsey site where there is a lot of mercury in the soil, the market people will not know and just sell it on.”

The approval for medicinal crops method they finally end up in town centres, loads of miles from unlawful mining spaces.

Sekina Ninikai, as an example, assets medicinal plant species to regard diseases starting from fever, jaundice and high blood pressure from forests in south-west Ghana, arguably the world worst-hit through unlawful mining. She trades them at the preferred Nima guidance in Accra, Ghana’s business leader, however can not vouch for his or her purity. “It worries me,” she advised Open Democracy. “I take this medicine too. We are all in the mess.”

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made through Readers and Contributors in this platform don’t essentially constitute the perspectives or coverage of Multimedia Group Limited.