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PAHO/WHO Rep. highlights impact of culture on health care
PAHO/WHO Rep. Dr. William Adu Krow
Culture is usually an important feature in many societies. But there are occasions that culture can prove to be detrimental even to the health care of some individuals.
This was the recent disclosure of local representative of the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation [PAHO/WHO], Dr. William Adu Krow.
Some known cultures, according to him, have been known to lend to gender-based violence. “There are some cultures that don’t do us anything, but if there is culture that hurts us, we need to make sure that we move away from that,” he asserted.
In order to address the growing incidence of gender-based violence, several programmes have been implemented at the national and community level with the involvement of various sectors, Dr. Adu Krow informed. He was at the time addressing a three-day In-Service Violence Against Women’ training workshop at the Marriott Hotel.
The workshop will culminate today.
Dr. Adu Krow said that while there are primary prevention strategies, combined with gender equality training and community-based initiatives that address gender inequality and communication and relationship skills, as well as hold promise, gaps still exists.
In fact he underscored too that “We need to be mindful of some of the referral mechanisms, because I think we need to know what we have to do if the police have a [gender-based violence] case first…whether they should also link up with health, whether they link up with a shelter, or link up with social services…I think we need to have a good referral mechanism,” the PAHO/WHO Rep emphasised.
Public health workers in particular, Dr. Adu Krow said, must in fact have a high index of suspicion.
“When we see a patient in front of us, we have to think, among other things, that it could also be a case of abuse. You have to look sometimes at the defensive wounds. If a man is going to hit a woman and she brings her hands up and there is a cut on the hand and you realize this could be one of them, you look out for other wounds that are suggestive of abuse,” said Dr. Adu Krow.
He pointed out that some spouses, can be intimidating enough to prevent the abused individual from even sharing their experience. As a result, “some abused women can be very evasive. You might ask ‘what happened to your eyes?’ and they respond ‘oh I just hit my head because I couldn’t see the door’…they are evasive too [sometimes] because they question ‘if I leave who will cook for him?” said the PAHO/WHO Rep.
In addressing such challenges, he noted that all health care workers, and not merely the clinicians, must embrace the efforts to tackle the situation of abuse.
“We must have an all-health care worker approach…all of us including the lab people, the social workers, the security guards in the parking lot – they see more than we do. They have to feed that information to us and we have to have roles,” said Dr. Adu Krow.
Also it is the expectation of the PAHO/WHO Rep. that there must be a policy in place that speaks to the notion of ‘if I am abused, say I am abused, and if my abuser and my family or my church pastor agree to settle the case’, no, that case should still go to the court of law…that case should not be dropped and we should abide by that.”
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