Don’t insult Suweiba Family
I have been reading from your columnist, Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey, regularly for some time. In fact, I had the chance to know him in person when I was the acting Features Editor of the Daily Graphic as he occasionally brought his feature articles for publication.
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In those days, he was writing on medical and health issues generally, and I really enjoyed his very educative pieces. It’s different from now when he writes medical-political pieces, which I still read.
I must say I was so disgusted reading his article in the Saturday, March 29, 2014, edition of the Daily Graphic, under the title: “Baby Suweiba: Unseen, unheard and now missing!
My disgust stemmed from the fact that I know Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey to be a medical doctor, and if my memory serves me right, he has once been either the General Secretary or an executive member of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA). I, therefore, have no doubt that as a medical doctor, he completely understood everything he wrote in that piece, especially its socio-cultural impact.
Sodzi-Tettey began his article on a completely false basis by stating in his intro (first paragraph) that “If Baby Suweiba had not died, first, there might never have been any opportunity for a national…….” Who told him Baby Suweiba had died? What evidence does he have as a medical doctor to state emphatically that the baby died?
Throughout his article, he referred to Baby Suweiba as “stillborn”, yet he does not provide any evidence that the baby was stillborn. He writes: The Suweiba story seems to have become famous only because the body of Baby Suweiba is missing and not because the baby was stillborn.”
As a layman, when it comes to medicine and medical terms, I can’t claim to know any better than Sodzi-Tettey, but my elementary understanding of ‘stillborn’ or ‘stillbirth’ is a baby born dead or a baby found dead as it was delivered.
In the Suweiba case, the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has not discounted with any acceptable evidence the mother’s account that her baby was delivered alive and that the midwives allowed the baby boy to be with her for a short while before he was taken away to be cleaned. How come Sodzi-Tettey then describes the baby as stillborn?
Interestingly, he defines what a stillborn baby is when he writes: “If newborns, born alive, are dying in appreciable numbers, who cares a hoot about a stillbirth which by definition refers to the death of a foetus in the womb from seven months onward?”
The most disgusting part of his article was his insult at the Suweiba Abdul Mumin, the mother of Baby Suweiba, and her family when he wrote: “This then becomes a classic demonstration of our collective affection for corpses and the risk we stand……fatalism.”
He writes again: “This will also require collective community repentance from the attitude that makes finding the body of a dead baby more important than preventing the baby from dying.” Apart from Sodzi-Tettey confusing himself and his readers with his lack of consistency in knowing what Baby Suweiba is, referring to the baby as a foetus and baby at the same time in a single article, it is very insulting for him to think that the Suweiba family are senseless, placing so much value on the dead than the living.
I’m not sure Sodzi-Tettey would have quietly gone home and slept peacefully if his wife was treated the same way Suweiba has been treated by KATH. If Baby Suweiba was his, and since February 5, he still hasn’t seen his body, whether dead or alive, would he have applauded the staff at KATH?
And also by linking the disappearance of Baby Suweiba to lack of equipment and ‘salubrious working environment,’ is Sodzi-Tettey telling us that as a medical doctor he would maltreat patients and even kill them simply because his working environment was not ‘salubrious’? In addition, since when did he, as a member of the GMA and one-time executive member, realise the lack of salubrious working environments in our health institutions and what has he and his association done to change the status quo?
Perhaps, I don’t need to be too surprised about a medical doctor insulting a patient whose newborn baby had been stolen by medical and health personnel at a state-run hospital. After all, the saying goes that ‘etua wo yonko ho a etua dua mu’ (when it’s not your feet that are in the shoes you never feel how they pinch).