Maravi

What’s gone wrong between Rupiah and Edith?

What’s gone wrong between Rupiah and Edith?
By Editor
Thu 01 Apr. 2010, 04:00 CAT

THE enjoyment of the right to adequate standard of living entails adequate and equal access to health services for all. This requires an acknowledgement of the problems that beset health services and the willingness to tackle them.

We all know our people’s suffering is as a result of the poor state and inadequacy of our health care system. There’s no need for Rupiah Banda and his parrots to go on a campaign against Edith Nawakwi on the concerns she has raised about the state of our health care system, especially the inadequate service being given to our women who go to deliver at these centres. What Edith is saying is the truth which no amount of lies, propaganda, manipulation will make good. We can only ask Rupiah and his parrots to have the courage of their responsibilities and stop telling lies. There’s no benefit for them in trying to mask difficulties, failures.

Today, people can’t survive without health care. Modern human beings can’t live without health care. We all know that our country is too poor to give our people a health care service they desire, but it can give them a sense of equality, of human dignity. But to do so requires an honest approach to governance and political leadership.

And to borrow from Lenin, the attitude – that is to say, the seriousness of purpose – of any government, of any political leadership is measured, basically, by the attitude it takes toward its own inadequacies, limitations, problems, challenges, difficulties and indeed failure. And in the same way, the seriousness of purpose of Rupiah and his government will be measured by the attitude they take toward their inadequacies, limitations, problems, challenges, difficulties and indeed failure.

Of course, their political competitors like Edith and others will always be alert to know what those inadequacies, limitations, problems, challenges, difficulties and indeed failures are. When these challenges are not accepted and subjected to the necessary scrutiny and criticism, their political competitors will take advantage of them. However, when they are subjected to scrutiny and criticism, they may be used by their political opponents, but in a very different way.

This is so because in the former case, these challenges would not be addressed and in the latter they would be. That is why it is very important for Rupiah and his minions to take a forthright and serious attitude toward the challenges facing their government. What is true cannot be changed by lies and propaganda. No matter how much lies are piled up on top of reality to try and conceal it, reality always surfaces and resurfaces.

It is not possible for anyone to succeed in claiming that a service that is there, that is being provided by the government is not being provided. Equally it is not possible for anyone, including Rupiah, to succeed in claiming that a service that government is not providing is being provided. We say this because there is nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it should be able to deliver services.

It is always important for our politicians, especially those in government, to always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for political rhetoric, for things in one’s dreams, in one’s head. They are every day struggling to win material benefits, to live better and in dignity, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children. This is what our people are struggling for every day, are yearning for every day.

There’s need for Rupiah and his parrots to recognise as a matter of conscience that there are many challenges, deficiencies and failures in their work. An important number of things they should have done have not been done at the right times, or not done at all. And when people question them on these things, and rightly so, there is no need for them to resort to lies and cheap propaganda; there is no need for them to start to malign and character assassinate any citizen who is exercising their right to question what they are doing on his or her behalf.

Edith is not telling lies about the state of our health services. She is also not telling lies about the inadequate maternity facilities in our country. The clinics or hospitals she is pointing them to are even far better when compared to the conditions of other health centres across the width and breadth of our country. The most they can do is to admit what Edith is saying and probably explain things away by claiming that they are doing everything possible to correct or better the situation.

We know that Rupiah and his parrots and their wives and children have got access to far much better, far much superior health care than the great majority of our people. And probably this blinds them to the realities facing their fellow citizens because they live in two different worlds.

Equality among citizens and demands of justice call for policies which aim to provide adequate health care for all without distinction.

There’s need for Rupiah and his friends to realise that life is sacred. It is a gift from God to be valued from the moment of conception until death. And human beings can never be reduced to the status of objects. As Christians, there is need for them to recognise that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.

Every person is of equal dignity. The value of life should not be measured by one’s possessions or position in life. In this country, the lives of those with higher social status are better cared for by the state. They are the ones who are sent abroad for the simplest of illnesses at a gigantic expense to the treasury. But when it comes to the poor, not even simple equipment is purchased for the use of hundreds of thousands of them without a gruelling fight or a strike action by some health workers.

We all know that absolute equality of access to health care for all citizens is difficult to achieve. However, this is an ideal which must always be striven for. The guiding principle determining whether a patient will receive priority treatment ought not be that patient’s apparent usefulness or position in society. Rather, every person, whether rich or poor, blood relative or not, political ally or opponent, has equal right to receive health care. We have no problem acknowledging whatever good effort is made by the government and others to improve our people’s health services. But at the same time, we are aware of the severe difficulties which our country’s health services are experiencing at present. And it’s no use trying to claim all is well and denounce those who are making effort to point out the inadequacies in the hope that more attention is drawn to them so that they can be addressed.

Without doubt our health services are in shambles. One cannot claim to uphold the principle of the sanctity of life if provision has not been made for even minimal health care for every person. This is a priority which a society cannot ignore if it wishes to be a caring and compassionate community. It must be recognised that if this problem is not tackled in an open and honest manner, it will demand the allocation of more resources from the state.

Every citizen of this country has the right to health care. This obliges the government to create conditions in which every citizen has access to health services and attention when they need them. This right obliges the government to provide enough funds for basic health care.

The problems of our health care system are not a creation of Edith and no amount of denouncing her, lies and propaganda against her will remedy the situation. Moreover, Edith cannot be said to be an enemy of Rupiah. Hardly two years ago Edith was moving around the country with Rupiah, campaigning for him to be elected President. So where is the hatred that Rupiah and his parrots are trying to make the nation believe Edith harbours against them?

Again, to praise these characters is divine, to criticise them even in the most mild way, even on things that can help improve their electoral chances if they dared to listen and accept criticism, is hatred, a crime! Anyway, the Zambian people are seeing for themselves what type of a person Rupiah is by the way he treats even those who were yesterday his political allies like Edith. We can only hope lessons are being learnt about what type of a political leader Rupiah is.

Labels: EDITH NAWAKWI, HEALTHCARE, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 3:05 PM