Money Health wa-ha-la

The face of death is not borne only of the aged; the young rather sadly are more often than not, caught in its grip. Sometime during my travels in Ghana, my son got ill. In the cause of my search for medical treatment, I sought the services of a private clinic with whom later, I volunteered with. On my first day of volunteer, for the most part, the day was uneventful. As I needed something to do, I started checking on patients on all the floors, that was were I stumbled upon the most humbling, sad event. A baby of seven months had been brought to hospital the previous day; she had been diagnosed with meningitis and pneumonia. She was seriously convulsing, nothing like I have experienced before in my profession as a nurse.

All the protocol I knew dealing with emergencies could not be enacted for the technology was unavailable. For instance I requested for oxygen and was told the tank was empty. I called upon one of the nurses who immediately took the baby poured cold water and her back to bed, whilst someone else called for the doctors attention to the new development. The issue when the doctor came was payment for life preserving drugs. The mother had no money, no family around to send for some money, she herself had not had anything substantial to eat since they came to the hospital. The nurses therefore decided to make a contribution which helped purchase some of the drugs.

The baby had nothing but a dirty and wet cloth napkin on, her mothers cloth had the baby’s stool on it. The child looks emaciated and dying. I requested to the doctor that I will pay some of the bills for the baby, hence treatment started. The next day when I arrived at the hospital to check on the baby, she appeared far better. I took the mother out to a wayside super market and bough some baby formulae and provisions for the baby. Gradually, with money to buy medications and pay off hospital bills, the baby was well looked after and discharged. The sad part of it all is that, the national health insurance scheme had not met them yet, healthcare professionals in government services are going on strike left , right and center making care of the poor and needy quite difficult.
As I sat to reflect upon this experience, I had wondered if I had not been around to bear some of these responsibilities, will the hospital have allowed this poor innocent baby to dies because of money because she was born into a poor state of affairs. Indeed, it is a hard life in Africa, and it is a sad state to life in a country where death seems the norm and does not move many people to s