By Napoleon Ato Kittoe
A conversation between two gentlemen introduced a new topic to me. They were chitchatting about the deaths of high-profile political figures in Ghana. One said there are some medical facilities he wouldn’t choose for political heavyweights in his party when they are ill.
The response he got in the dialogue was, “never mind, that is impossible, medical doctors swear the professional hippocratic oath which binds them to correct behaviour.”
Then the other person cut in, “Please don’t say that. Do you know how many figures have died simply by allowing themselves to be serviced by a particular hospital? He went on to say that in that same facility, when members of the other political stock were sent there, they survived.
Fact is, every government provides social services, including medical centres, to attend to the health needs of people. The argument of political doctors doing their own things to suit their whims and caprices loses grounds for lack of evidence. Suspicions that some doctors wear political lenses when attending to politicians would remain a dark secret for a very long time if there were any Pandora boxes at all.
If that had existed with us without our knowledge, it belongs to the rare probability of some doctors falling victim to political puppetry because they acquiesced to political parties to compromise on professional conduct in the exercise of their duties, which then results in the death of a patient who was visibly political.
And how can a medical doctor visit death on a patient? It is simple, but not that easy to do. Wrong prescriptions or attitudinal mishaps visited on the patient can cause death. Doctors do not have their backs covered if medical audits undertaken by pathologists are fully observed. What will be the backup action in case the chain is compromised to suppress evidence of misconduct?
The death would have occurred already, and that is irreversible if it was at the instance of wilful misconduct by a medical officer. Thus, sufficient checks will be key to the prevention of hazardous culture in medical administration, need I say the authorities must make public the system of checks and balances there are in the medical field.
Once euthanasia, the practice where terminally ill patients are medically assisted to die, exists, doctors can practice to give opposite results, such as further endangering lives or causing avoidable deaths.
In Ghana, a section of the public has raised concerns about high-profile politicians seeking medical treatment at places other than their own. This attracts varied opinions, from the lack of belief in the capability of their country’s medical system, through hiding their sickness, to a fear of being killed by an imagined medical doctor.
Well, some have braced the storm, and within the collection are mixed results. To mention but a few of the personalities who were attended by local doctors because their cases were made public were former President John Agyekum Kufuor, late former President Jerry Rawlings, the late former President Dr Hilla Limann, and late former Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama.
There were some who sought medical attention in foreign countries, and were sent back in the figurative “wooden pyjamas.” That term, which is an euphemism for coffins, was invented in the late 1980s by Captain Kojo Tsikata, then the National Security Advisor to the PNDC Government, whose buoyant return from a foreign trip made light work of the wild rumours.
Reality is not lost on lovers of Shakespearean and Greek literature of tragedy. Their books used fiction to depict forced deaths that occur in the world of non-fiction. Sworn enemies go to every length to take their pound of flesh on each other, especially villains on protagonists caught unsuspecting or even naive. Looking before we leap is important; even more important are the checks within medical practice.
A doctor’s error is not equivalent to murder in the hospital chamber. The two scenarios don’t cross paths. The subject is a tricky affair when one recalls what happened in the United States over Michael Jackson’s death and in Argentina when Diego Maradona died. In each case, their doctors were accosted by the state or legal system for allegedly administering
wrong or misguided medication to their patients.
Someone has suggested that medical doctors are the ones who must be granted the right and the honour of using sirens to pave their way in heavy vehicular traffic to do the needful to waiting cases, some of which are damn urgent.
