Is It Now Prudent To Discuss Someone�s Health In Public?

The CEO of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Prof Nii Otu Nartey, has made a free offer to all political party flag-bearers to undergo medical checks. But the question then is: 1. Why was such an offer not made when Atta Mills was virtually a walking-dead and was governing the nation from his hospital bed? 2. Doesn�t Prof Nii Otu-Nartey know that these flag-bearers are all people of great substance who already have access to top-notch personal physicians? Clearly, this call by Prof Nii Otu-Nartey is nothing but mischief and waste of everybody�s precious time since there are many ordinary poor Ghanaians his outfits can focus its attention on. This obvious bogus offer by Prof Nartey became a topic for discussion on Radio Gold and Asempa FM whose airwaves have always been expended on nothing but damn-right trivialities. These two media outlets, and their hosts are the very same people who were at the fore-front of keeping under wraps, Atta Mills� sickness and verbally abused those of us that demanded to know what exactly was wrong with him. Prof Nartey was here in Ghana when the late Atta Mills was almost a walking corpse but sat aloof and failed to extend such a noble offer to him, resulting in the nation being saddled with a gargantuan state funeral. That state funeral is said to have cost the nation over $10m and incalculable amount of precious working hours. That was an expenditure which had neither been captured in budget statement for the year nor set aside anywhere in a contingency fund but when it became necessary, the nation was able to cough out that much to organize a gargantuan send-off funeral for the late President Atta Mills. This is an amount of money that could have been used to dig bore-holes in deprived areas of our nation to help alleviate the menace of guinea-worm infections and other water-borne diseases for our compatriots who currently compete with livestock for the same source of water. But true to the legendary Ghanaian matchless love for the dead, we all united in grief to give our late president a fitting burial without questions being asked as to how much was being expended on the funeral activities. Some Isofotonic account was rendered by Kofi Totobi kwakye and his bunch of old evil dwarfs that were tasked with organizing the funeral but nobody even bothered to take a look since we all know these NDC people are very shrewd when it comes to cooking up figures to balanced fictitious spending. Now, Ghana had to cough out that amount of money for a state funeral because we allowed some current government officials to hold Atta Mills hostage within the high walls of castle and made sure the man died before his God-given time. This bunch of greedy people who saw the continuous presidency of Atta-Mills as their only source of livelihood and therefore denied the man the necessary rest as demanded by his personal physicians, in any civilized nation, would have been properly investigated and charged for act of manslaughter. However, we find ourselves in a nation where issues bordering on law and medicine are conveniently substituted with superstition and so-called Ghanaians cultural/customary practices. Indeed, this kind of national mindset is what provided a cover for plain-faced murderers who engaged in acts of pure stiff-necked belligerence in the face of mounting calls to allow the late president to take a long rest and concentrate on his health since life is not all about the presidency. In medical practice, a patient is always told how long he/she has left to live when the state of his/health degenerates to a certain extent. Now, from the way Atta Mills sounded at the airport on his return from the last trip abroad for routine medical checks, I had no doubt in my mind that he was told in plain language that he didn�t have much time left to live. However, this truth was skillfully kept away from the citizenry whose taxes paid for the president�s entire upkeep, under the cloak of this so-called Ghanaian customary practice of not talking about a person�s health status. Those of us who dared to say anything about how bad the shape of the president was and the need for his handlers to allow him time off duty, were branded as �ghost-mongers� who had to be ostracized from the shores of Ghana. The demonization of those of us who demanded for full disclosure of what was wrong with the president were made to look like agents of the devil seeking the death of Atta Mills, in the eyes of Ghanaians. In the end, we were forced to comply with this age-old Ghanaian custom of not talking about the health of an individual by keeping our mouths shut and maintaining eternal silence. But in all that, I never was troubled by the NDC�s senseless demonization of some of us for speaking the truth; and my motivation to keep my head up in the face of that barrage of attacks was firmly rooted in the fact that, very member of NDC suffers from an incurable ailment of chronic hypocrisy. And this is why I have always maintained that whenever you hear an NDC person shouting the loudest against an issue, just be calm, put the said issue under a microscope, observe it with a keen eye and you will find fingerprints of this very same NDC person boldly imprinted all over. John Mahama�s pronouncement on Friday, 26th October, 2012, during the Muslim celebration at the Independence Square that he was sounding a note of caution to all teachers not to tell Muslim kids about the Bible is extremely uncalled for since it has the potential to disturb the existing religious harmony amongst Ghanaians of all religious persuasions. Again, John Mahama said at this same function that the former vice president, Aliu Mahama, was sick, which has turned out to be completely false. Ironically, this very same John Mahama was the head of the Castle cabal that kept lying about Atta Mills� degenerating health and finally murdered him but has found it prudent to talk about someone�s health in public. Indeed, I know John Mahama is very famous for his chronic verbal flatulent gibberish but that pronouncements he made about Aliu Mahama being sick and hospitalized, when there was absolutely no truth to that effect, was extremely injudicious and highly unfitting of him, even though he is only a spare tyre leader and from whom much is not expected by right-thinking Ghanaians. Aliu Mahama, I was told, was on the same flight to Tamale with John Mahama�s Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu and deputy Minister of Energy Inusah Fusseini a day before he misfired at the Independence Square in Accra when the former Vice President was celebrating the Eid ul-Adha in the Northern regional capital. Atta Mills was virtually a walking corpse but there was never a single moment any of these damn bloody NDC mental patients ever spoke about it because we were told that by our Ghanaian cultural norms that it is imprudent to talk about someone�s sickness in public. So, for John Mahama to make a public pronouncement that former vice president Aliu Mahama was sick and had been hospitalized, which has turned out to be complete false, actually goes to cement the fact that he is a character who thinks differently.