Despite the newly built and opened Farafenni General Hospital, healthcare
services in the Gambia are still very slim.
Thousands of the common people have no access to basic healthcare services.
And where these services are accesed, they are either too expensive for many
or terribly inadequate.
Government continues to defend, albeit on paper and in words not in deed, its
committment to the so called "Health for All by 2000" ideology. However, the
situation on the ground as well as recent demographic and ethnographic
statistics show otherwise. In 1996, the National Population Commission
Secretariat reported that there is, in 1993, one medical doctor to 35,738
Gambians. This situation is further grimmed if we look at the number of
persons per community health nurse, state enrolled nurse or state registered
nurse.
One may argue that 1993 is long gone. However, no change in the healthcare
service has been so radical or significant as to warrant a noticeable
deviation in the 1993 figures - thousands of Gambians still die prematurely
because healthcare services are at their very worse.
The gap between the rural poor and the urban elite in terms of the
availability and accessibility of healthcare is an ever growing colossus! The
common man's vulnerability to this grim situation is further compounded by
social deprivation, the direct product of poverty, discrimination and neglect.
It is my opinion that healthcare in the Gambia can only be meaningful if it
is accompanied by improvements in social conditions such as better
sanitation, access to clean water, improved nutritional standards, better
housing, increased employment, etc, as well as government's total committment
to not only providing services but ensuring that they are adequate and
accessible to all regardless of their social status, region of domicility,
age, sex, race, religious and political beliefs.
[ WHAT IS YOUR OPINION?]
Whilst Yaya Jammeh continues to spend heavily on arms, the renovation of
state house and his farm in Kanili, Pateh and Samba Taxpayer continue to ride
on a horse cart ambulance; even in life threatening circumstances. MAY GOD
HELP US!!!
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