Dinah Mitchell, Mobutu Kamara and hell. Where is hell?

Oct 23, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This woman walked up to me just as I was about to approach African rights activist Penda Guyan. She said, “I must talk to you.” The place was the Pentecostal Church in ‘A’ Field, Sophia. The occasion was the funeral service for the son of Adam Harris. So she talked to me.
I was told that Dinah Mitchell was air dashed from Port Kaituma to the emergency wing of the Georgetown Hospital. She arrived at the hospital at 10.00 hours and was placed on a stretcher where she lay until 18.00 hours when she was examined and admitted to the ward. This only happened because of the intervention of the woman who told me the story. And of course she insisted three times that I not identify her – the usual thing in Guyana.
Would anyone believe that a citizen can be transported by plane from deep in the interior to A&E at the Georgetown Hospital, and attended to eight hours after?
More terrifying things happen at the Georgetown Hospital. Here is one.
On Monday, my friend Mobutu Kamara visited me at home. Mobutu (it was customary in the seventies for many African youths in ASCRIA to adopt African names) and I go way back in the Working People’s Alliance.
He was on his way to the Surgical Outpatient Department known as SOPD. If you think A&E is the only place where you can locate hell, then there is SOPD. We’ll return to SOPD below. I agreed after my exercise in the National Park, I would see him at SOPD. It just happened as I was driving towards the hospital, I saw Mobutu on the road. He had left the hospital. What happened?
His card to do an ultrasound didn’t have his name, because the doctor didn’t put it in. We got all these little things sorted out and proceed to the X-ray section for the ultrasound. The nearest date the hospital gave him was December 22. That is the next two months.
I sought clarification, but was told December 22 is the nearest date.
My persistence was greeted with an explanation. The hospital does ultrasound from Monday to Friday at sixty patients a day. Something is not right here. It means that for each month at 60 patients per day, the hospital does 1800 ultrasound procedures. This figure excludes all private hospitals and other state-run medical facilities.
When you take that 1800 and add to it private hospitals, West Dem hospital, the Diamond Diagnostic Centre, New Amsterdam Hospital and take a percentage out of the total population, most people in Guyana of a certain age group are sick. Thirty-six percent of our population is below 15 years. Over fifty-five percent is below the age of thirty-five.
Let us assume that those within the age limit of 1-45 do not get sick often, then it means out of a population of just below 800,000, more than forty percent of this nation is sick when you look at the large numbers taking ultrasound. The Georgetown Hospital alone does 1600 per month.
Mobutu Kamara is an ill person. Do you know what can happen before those two months when his ultrasound is due? Mobutu Kamara was a fine young radical that gave his youth fighting for free and fair elections and against dictatorship in his country. Is this the way he should be treated? The same we can say of Ronald Todd.
I went with Tacuma Ogunseye and others to the funeral of Ronald Todd, and was shocked to see the type of dwelling he lived in. Like Mobutu Kamara, Ronald Todd gave his entire youth fighting for democracy. He deserved a better house from his country. He didn’t live to see it.
Surely, the WPA to which both Todd and Kamara belonged should have made representation for these cadres that gave all their youth to the WPA. Todd is dead and gone, but the WPA has an obligation to many others like Mobutu to see that their welfare in the autumn of their lives is guaranteed.
Finally, the SOPD. If you want to see how poor this country is, then go to the SODP any morning from Monday to Friday. Not hundreds, but thousands line up to receive medical attention for all types of ailments. Every individual without exception sees a doctor after five hours of waiting. If you want to see where hell is and what hell is like, go to A&E and SOPD at the Georgetown Hospital.

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Dinah Mitchell, Mobutu Kamara and hell. Where is hell?

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