Ghana witnessed a demonstration dubbed “Fix the Country” on the 4th of August, 2021, among other reasons, organizers and people who joined in this demonstration believes that the country lacks effective leadership.
Some said people in political offices have not demonstrated
leadership enough, others are against the building of the National Cathedral
which has become topical and many said there was hardship.
While I agree partly with the reasons assigned by the
organizers of the Fix the Country demonstration, I have, from the first day of
the Fix the country, fix yourself, debate, believed that we should be
discussing how to fix ourselves as a people.
I believe that when we are able to effectively fix
ourselves, it will automatically translate into fixing the country and I will
give an explanation into that soon.
Just recently, I witnessed a situation at the 37 Military
Hospital that got me traumatized. A single mother of a nine-year-old with
cerebral palsy, said her child was having continuous seizures. This child was
admitted to the hospital, I happen to visit this mother two times at the hospital.
Every time I visited, the child was having a seizure, the
first time I visited was when they were first admitted, the second time was a
week after admission.
During my second visit, I met the young man having a serious
seizure which resulted in him biting his tongue and blood oozing out of his
mouth. I was shaken because, the nurses present seems to be at their wits end.
I spoke with all three nurses present and their response was
we are trying to get a doctor to come, I was in the hospital for 20 minutes and
even at the time I was leaving, the young man was having the seizure.
I visited this mother because she approached me for help. I
run a not-for-profit advocacy organization that supports children with cerebral
palsy and their families, while at the hospital, I took a video of the boy
having a seizure, my thoughts were to ask for prayer support for this young man
since the medics seems to be at their wits end and also to see if through the
power of social media, we could link them to a specialist.
The hospital staff on seeing the video on Facebook
threatened the mother of the young man to blackmail me to pull the video down
with a simple reason that I mentioned the hospital and also mentioned that
there was no doctor.
The truth is there was no doctor to attend to the helpless
child, whether the “no doctor” was intentional or not, I cannot judge but the
attitude of the hospital about the video on social media made me feel something
was wrong.
Perhaps, nurses were not doing something right, they didn’t
give the care they were suppose to give or something and they were using
threats to cover up their wrong attitude. Their wrong attitude which needs
fixing.
So, if government fix the healthcare situation in the
country by completing the 88 hospitals and the staff in the hospital have an “I
don’t care about you attitude” the healthcare situation will still not be
fixed.
It is common knowledge that Ghana have some very good laws,
but those laws remain on paper, it doesn’t get implemented. The person employed
by government to ensure the implementation of the law, perhaps benefits from
the law not working and so will ensure that the law does not work.
I appreciate health workers very much for the yeoman’s job
they do especially in this Covid era but in a situation where a health care
worker looks on for an innocent child to die because they are at their wits end
and nothing pushed them to show an iota of care to a suffering child and
mother, no, it is a fix yourself situation.
A day after the incident, I woke up and during my morning
meditation, I prayed: “Oh God, May I and my family members not be at the mercy
of our health care system, May I have enough money to afford healthcare at
Euracare or healthcare in a developed country where I believe that the healthcare
personnel employed to work there are obliged to show a bit of care about my
pain.”
I am of the firm believe that if as many of as possible made
a decision to fix ourselves by doing the right thing, doing what we are paid to
do, respecting human beings no matter the status or “class” we think they are,
it will have done a greater part of fixing the country.
I will not hesitate to join a fix yourself demonstration any
day
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