An NDC youth group describing itself as National Democratic Congress Youth Committee, led by Peter Boamah Otokunor and Fred Agbenyo, believe the President of the Ghana Medical Association, Emmanuel Adom Winful and his colleague striking doctors are a bunch of “murderers”.

“Adom Winful and his assigns must be prosecuted for murder of innocent lives to bring justice to the families of all deceased within the last ten days at the various hospitals in the country,” the group noted in a statement.

This, according to the NDC boys, was because the GMA boss had made a comment to the effect that “people die anyway and so if doctors’ strike results in deaths, there is nothing wrong with it”. The young men seem to have developed a mastery over the use of abusive words since they chose to describe an elderly Adom Winful in very disparaging terms such as “shameless, wicked, satanic, heartless, evil” and other unprintable words.

The group asked, “How on earth can a trained medical doctor who has taken his Hippocratic Oath, open his mouth and say that people die anyway and so if innocent lives are lost as a result of the strike action, he cannot be bothered?”

According to them, “Never in the history of Ghana’s medical profession has a doctor made the kind of unacceptable statement that Adom Winful made”. They wondered whether the man could convince right-thinking persons that he was not a mass murderer masquerading as a medical doctor. “Indeed, after he has gotten all the money that he wants and called off his strike how can he continue to have the confidence of patients, considering the kind of ‘all die be die’ mentality that he has?” the group queried, adding that Dr. Winful should bow his head in shame because “he has brought a lot of ignominy to the medical profession”.

The NDC group likened the GMA boss’s position to the ‘All die be die’ statement made by the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, indicating that “as far as Adom Winful is concerned, the ethics of the medical profession can go to the dogs just because he wants more money in his pocket” and that “the money in his pocket is more important than human lives that he was trained to save”.

The statement said, “There is no medical textbook, code of ethics or theory that supports the wicked and evil stance of Adom Winful.”

It added, “The tactics adopted by Adom Winful and few of his colleagues amount to a complete blackmail and must be condemned”, noting, “Adom Winful has propounded his own wicked theory of ‘people die anyway’ …perhaps because he doesn’t value human life or because he happens to be an atheist.”

The group urged the GMA boss and the entire leadership of the GMA to resign to protect the image of the association since “no matter the extent to which the striking doctors have a legitimate reason. Adom Winful’s heartless and reckless statement has done a lot of harm to the image of the GMA and if the doctors want to claw back some respect, Emmanuel Adom Winful must immediately step down as the President of the Association”.

According to them, “if Adom Winful was operating in some other jurisdiction, his medical licence would have been taken away from him by now” and asked the appropriate authorities to take steps to seize his license since he could not be trusted.