The privilege to die in an expensive Hospital

By Daimone Siulapwa

THE ad-hoc committee at the country’s biggest health institution, the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) may not have thought it necessary to send late immediate Vice President George Kunda for specialist treatment, either in South Africa or India or indeed any other country.
While it was certainly saddening to the country to lose one of its best legal brains, George Kunda will always have his place in the pages of this country’s history. Unlike most political leaders, who have had to be flown as passengers abroad for so-called specialist treatment only to return home as cargo, George Kunda died right here at home amongst his people. If you look at it, more have come back as cargo as compared to those that have been healed.[pullquote]But what is important is for us as a country to take the late Vice President’s death, as a starting point for a whole new policy initiative altogether[/pullquote]

Whether his life would have been secured had he been flown abroad is another matter. But what is important is for us as a country to take the late Vice President’s death, as a starting point for a whole new policy initiative altogether.

Put differently, never again should tax payer’s money be used to fly our political leaders (who are actually supposed to be our servants) abroad for specialist treatment when we have the UTH here. Forget the point on whether the UTH is sufficiently equipped to deal with complicated cases or not. It is certainly not the responsibility of the average citizen of this country to ensure that the country’s biggest as well as small health centres are equipped with the necessary equipment and human personnel.
On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the government of the day to do so. In fact, we pay tax so that those who seek political public office and want to get paid through our tax, can be able to fix these institutions.

If however, for their own reasons, certainly selfish being among them, they feel the conditions at UTH or any other local health institution are not sufficient to treat them, then we demand that they stop using our money to fly themselves abroad.
In fact, this has been long-over due. We want to start seeing our leaders being treated at home. Whether they die, or get healed, is another matter. In fact, as President Sata said at the requiem mass of the late George Kunda at the Cathedral of the Child Jesus, in reference to why the late Vice President was not taken abroad for specialist treatment: ‘No science is greater than God.” In other words, if it is the will of God that these leaders die, then it will be so, whether it is in UTH or Milpark Hospital.

This may sound unAfrican, but it is definitely patriotic, perhaps not until they start dying at UTH will something ever be done to improve the pathetic state of facilities and quality of health care that is offered at our biggest hospital in the country UTH and other referral hospitals round the country.
It has almost become a status symbol for our leaders to want to be evacuated for treatment out of the country even when some know that their chances of survival are near to zero. Again, this is no way a wish of bad luck on our leaders or indeed on my part, but I would look forward to a day when I would share a ward with some Member of Parliament or Cabinet Minister, much the same way we do with our sisters and brothers.
Maybe, that way, they will come to realise our pathetic the conditions are at UTH, where one who has been admitted for cerebral malaria risks coming out of hospital with an air borne disease upon discharge.

But just in case none of our leaders are willing to risk all this, they are free to seek specialist treatment, but only on condition that they pay for these services from their own pockets, just like we ordinary citizens do. By the way, we do this from our meagre resources, a fraction of what our leaders get.

Otherwise, why should we be always exporting our high ranking political leaders for specialist treatment when they are unable to do anything to improve our local health service delivery system?
Many of our people are lucky to get attended to by a medical doctor in our so called hospitals while some die while on the queue to see a specialist. For others still, they die because there is no doctor to attend to them despite travelling from as far as Chongwe, sacrificing their meagre resources so as to save their own life.

As if that is not enough, others are unable to even access simple medication as panadol. For those of our leaders who seek treatment at UTH, they are always accorded special treatment in the majestically called Presidential wing of the UTH where they will be attended to by group of more than five Senior Doctors while we have some people in the same building in the casualty ward standing in the queue for more than five hours only to be told to go back to Matero clinic and get a referral because there is no Doctor to see them.
To add salt on the wound, as if that the presidential wing was not presidential enough, we now want to evacuate these same people to another country, and an equally expensive hospital.
What an injustice. Maiko Zulu’s song, Morning Side, is spot-on.