With my medical background which started in the prestigious Saint John’s School at ‘Baka Ekyir’ in Sekondi, I would like to give my cherished readers, a little lesson in human anatomy. And it is simply this; there are some people who, at birth, are endowed with both a male and a female sexual organ. This condition is what is medically known as hermaphrodite.

On our Ghanaian political scene today, there are some individuals who have become extremely notorious with their perfect art of confounding us as to where they exactly belong on the political spectrum. For, these individuals have hidden in their private parts, the flags of both CPP and NDC.These people refer to themselves as ‘senior’ journalists but I will describe them, aptly, as political-hermaphrodites.

The un-alloyed arrogation of power by these individuals to themselves has seriously got me thinking. These individuals see themselves as all-knowing and therefore expect their views on every issue to be considered as the-bottom-line. You dare challenge such people (being a host or guest) during a Radio/TV discussion and they will threaten never to step in your studios again.Infact, they would even threaten to gather all the knowledge on this planet, tied it up in a cocoa-sack and go and hide it under their ‘senior-journalistic-bed’!!

Strike by doctors

We currently have a very serious national crisis on our hands, as regards the strike by medical doctors. If this crisis had happened in a civilized nation as America, the president would have put aside all his scheduled programmes and summoned a his top advisors to a meeting where critical thinking will be done in order to come out with a solution to problem. This is what people, who go to queue in the sun to elect leaders, provide them with all the comfort under sun and even cater for their multi-billion Ghana cedi medical bills, must get in-return. But because we currently have a president who is virtually blind and medically unsound, he has completely left his presidential powers in the hands of the likes of Kwesi Pratt and his foolish foul-mouthed charlatans. These people, who have absolutely no knowledge in the workings within the medical field and therefore must shut their noise-making big mouths, are rather going about rubbing iodated-salt in the wounds of justifiably aggrieved medical doctors. They have been making a completely stupid argument that a nurse with a PhD must necessarily be paid the same salary as a medical doctor.

Medical doctor vrs nurse with a PhD

Now, who told Kwesi Pratt and his ignoramus cohorts that the course content of a nurse with PhD is the same as that of a medical doctor, and that, they must be put on the same salary?

For example, when I was having my training in Radiological Technology at the Korle-Teaching Hospital, enrolled nurses who wanted to upgrade themselves to the level of state registered nurses (SRN), were made to study only the skull and pelvic bones of the human skeleton.Meanwhile, even a first year medical student is suppose to know the entire skeletal, nervous, vascular, lymphatic and circulation system. And with these systems comes the cells and glands.So,it will only take a complete buffoon as Kwesi Pratt and his ilk, to be propounding this fallacy of a qualified doctor and a nurses with a PhD, as having attained the same academic standard.

What I believe is confusing the likes of Kwesi Pratt is the fact that, a nurse with a PhD, which is a doctorate in an aspect of health-care delivey,also carries the “doctor” title so he/she is equal to a qualified medical doctor. But the point is; a nurse with a PhD is simply someone who has studied, only, nursing to that level. But a medical doctor, on the other hand, is someone who has been trained in a specialized field of medicine. Forinstance, one may study nursing to even the level of a professor, yet, he/she cannot perform a surgical procedure on a patient. So where is the confluence between these two academic levels?

‘Dr’. Asemforo to enjoy SSSS

I guess in the thinking of Kwesi Pratt and his cohorts, any person with the title of a “doctor” must necessarily earn the same salary as a medical doctor. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised if we wake-up one day to hear Kwesi Pratt advocating for personalities like ‘Dr’ Asemfofro(serial caller), ‘Dr’ Paa Bobo(high-life musician) and ‘Dr’ sharp(chemical peddler) to be put on the same salary scale as qualified medical doctors.

After that, then agitations will start for the likes of ‘Prof’. Kofi Abraham (gospel musician) and ‘Prof’. Azuma-Nelson(the boxing legend) to be put on the same salary scale with the likes of Prof. Opanyin Kofi Agyekum,Prof. Assenso-Okyere,Prof. Ewurama Dolphine,Prof. Vladimir Antwi-Danso,Prof. Akilapa Sawyer,Prof. Audrey Gadzekpo and so on. How do we hope to move forward as a nation with such absolute block-heads having the ear of an equally clueless Atta-Mills?

NADMO to train medical ‘doctors’

Indeed, on 15th October, 2011 edition of ‘alhaji-alhaji’ on Radio Gold, Kwesi Pratt actually went to the extent of calling on NADMO to mobilize truck-pushers, ice-water sellers, carpenters and trotro/taxi drivers at our various foot-ball stadia, give them syringe/hypodermic needles and dispatch them across the nation to be injecting sick people who have been neglected by “murderous and unreasonable medical doctors”!!!

Highly innovative carpenters

He also said that, the box with inner lighting system, used to read radiographs are manufactured by carpenters.Now, Medical Radiography happens to be my professional field of study and I have worked under the stewardships of very renowned Consultant Radiologists as the late Dr.William Christian, Dr. Boaten-Juma, Dr.Brakohiapa and late Dr. Kotei when they headed, at various times, the Radiology Department of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital. It was during our training that the current broken down X-Ray machines were donated to Ghana by the Japanese government.

The viewing-box for radiographs(X-Ray films),which Kwesi Pratt ignorantly describes as a mere handy work of carpenters, actually comes as a component of the whole radiological equipment and I really do not know where in Ghana Kwesi Pratt ever saw carpenters manufacturing such equipments. But I’m not surprise because, it is this same Kwesi Pratt who said bullet-proof jackets can be manufactured by artisans of ‘kokompe’ since all that one needs is just a piece of scrap metal and discarded tarpaulin, and you will be churning out millions of these jackets, every second!!!

Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s hypocritic buffoonery

On that same programme, one of these foul-mouthed juvenile-delinquent deputy ministers,Okudzeto-Ablakwa, was also insulting the doctors and describing them as putting on the cloak of elitism and therefore neglecting ordinary poor and sick Ghanaian. But the question is: how can Okudzeto-Ablakwa describe doctors as elitist when he(Okudzeto),who until the inception of the Mills-Mahama administration, had never had a job before, can today hire a private jet, fly his friends to the north, take a wife and then embark on a 'nuptial-flight' with her to America? ? What is more elitist than this? Would Okudzeto-Ablakwa have been able to engage in such crass opulence if NDC was still in opposition? And how many of these hard-working doctors, who probably have been working long before Okudzato-Ablakwa was even born, are in the position to afford this boy’s current level of obscene profligacy? Indeed, crude hypocrisy is the blood that runs through the veins of these juvenile-delinquent vagabonds of the NDC. Government appointees who are being paid huge salaries to come up with solution to such crisis have all joined their hypocrite, deceptive, pretentious and self-styled ‘asomdwee hene’ to recklessly castigate the doctors while the ordinary citizen continues to suffer. What kind of leadership paralysis is this?

Pseudo-Marxists

The great irony is; Kwesi Pratt and his ilk continue to eulogize the ideals of Cuba and North Korea. But, they are living in Ghana where they enjoy property ownersip, obscene level of opulence and limitless freedoms that are completely non-existent in these afore-mentioned ideologically constipated nations. Kwesi Pratt and his gang of pretentious characters are currently paying tens of thousands of British pounds each academic calendar, to educate their children, not in either Cuba or North Koea, but in Western nations as Britain and America. And as to where these ‘huuuuge’ sums of cash are coming from, in the light of their non-profit making FREEDOM CENTRES, unsightly ISIGHT NEWSPAPERS,NON-MILITANT MILITANT PRINTING HOUSES and mere 24/7 Radio/TV appearances, only the holy angels in heaven can tell. We must therefore not allow cogent contributions of decent minds of our Great, beautiful and free country, which is unfortunately being mismanaged by clueless Atta-Mills at the moment, to be crowded-out by vituperative cacophony of Kwesi Pratt and his horde of palpable charlatans and plain-faced pseudo-Marxists!!! What the likes of Kwesi Pratt and his legion of shamelessly shameless ‘nkwan deewa’ charlatans are doing with the current dispute between the medical doctors and Fair Wages Commission is extremely reckless and dangerously counterproductive. In the light of this, I would urge every right-thinking Ghanaian to rise up and call the bluff of these pseudo-Marxist anarchic vagabonds, in order to stop them from their incessant vituperative and senselessly senseless senselessness that contributes absolutely nothing to our nation’s socio-economic advancement.

NOTE: part (2) of ‘The Dawn of Rupia-Bandacracy in Africa’ comes your way next week. Please stay tuned.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei

E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com