Amateur Doctors Compromising the Life of the Neonates in Somalia

I become obsessed when I saw unexpectedly what has looked a “perplexing” to me circulating on social media! It was a baby born dangling the bare hands of an ill-disciplined, amateur, and unprofessional doctor. I have politely asked one of my friends who is a pediatric doctor if this behavioral is acceptable and when he has realized what the doctor is holding is a new baby born that has just arrived minutes before into this world if not seconds said “An ill-educated person only dares to act like this” and added, “What baffles me is about the safety of that poor baby.” Yes, he was right and everyone flabbergasted for how the doctor behaved and had enough time to request his friends to take pictures but not thought about the safety of the new baby and how his mishandling can have severe implications to the infant. The doctor could have remembered that the newborn was not ready for rough play such as holding up the baby like a trophy or dangling out from his fingers around the rip that can collapse the lung or cause fractures only to take pictures he wanted to post his Facebook whilst the baby needed a piece of cloth wrapped over his body to get warmth and additional health inspections. The doctor was supposed to swaddle on the baby’s body to give a warm since the temperature inside the mother’s womb is different and the baby can’t endure interacting immediately with a strange temperature. In addition to that, the baby was one of the quintuplets born under the Cesarean Section (C-section) and most probably the babies are born prematurely due to the appearance of the picture he posted on his Facebook and therefore, obviously, the quintuplets need extra care and dealing with the utmost. I didn’t fathom what makes mandatory for most doctors operating in the country to get pictures while they are on their patients copying the mentality of NGOs. The doctor must be prepared for cuddling and affection while dealing with his clients but, he has shown his intentional negligence.

 

Habitually a baby’s birth is a joyful event. However, the inappropriate actions of a negligent obstetrician, nurses, or poorly administered health centers can turn the family’s laughter into tears as a result of a mishandling, medical mistake, or a birth injury involved by the unmonitored medics working with impunity. These horribly wrong preventable incidents can result in the infant to sustain an irreversible injury that can affect his/her life forever. Unfortunately, hundreds of neonates lost their lives every year in Somalia without proper documenting of the infant’s wrongful deaths. One of the main postnatal care responsibilities of the doctor is to perform Apgar Score soon after the baby born (typically done 1-5 minutes soon after the baby is born) to ensure the condition of the newborn. Nowadays, doctors, as they are in a wedding ceremony use cellular mobile phones almost consistently in the operation theater and in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that can inflict the risk of nosocomial infection to the newborns and other patients while these behaviors are unrecommended.

 

This remembers me of a Moldovan doctor who was in 2016, suspended to practice his profession by the Ministry of Health after taking a selfie with a semi-naked mother in the delivery room along with the photo caption, “Work is at its peak”. Soon after the controversial photo become public and created outrage, the Minister of Health of that country said “The doctor would be punished for the unprofessional behavior.”

 

It was December last year when I was in the emergency room of Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital with my grandfather while a middle-aged man rushing for his 13 years old daughter yelling for help got through. A Turkish doctor came and tried CPR using an electrical resuscitation machine while the daughter had already died before she was admitted to the hospital. I have asked the shuddering father what happened to his daughter and he said, “She was playing to her siblings in the morning when she felt a mild headache, and her mother took her to a doctor running a nearby clinic who had injected her without a diagnosis.” It was a terrible moment for the bereaved family to witness their daughter departed and all that happened in less than two hours.

 

Patients rely on ill-educated amateurs that are not qualified & not licensed to practice medicine operating with impunity in everywhere in the country and playing with the lives of the poor patients by carrying out surgeries, injecting and prescribing unrecommended medicines on a daily basis that has caused many lives to depart from this world.

 

The patient has entrusted his/her life to the doctor and rarely doctors tell parents if something went wrong or if they had made mistakes while parents bewilder the condition of their babies. These unexpected circumstances can leave parents feeling alone, helpless, and unaided. Subsequently, patients expect their doctor to use his/her knowledge in accordance with medical law and keep his/her mind the interest of the patient.

Therefore, the Federal Government especially the Ministry of Health should seriously take its role of licensing medical professionals and revoke the license of abusers and individuals involved in unethical behaviors and malpractices. The Ministry of Health should create an environment where the law prevails, doctors and hospitals are accountable whenever they betray their patients and set up health courts that punish the transgressed doctors under the law.

 

Finally, apart from the treatment, patients have privacies to enjoy expected from the medics, and it’s forbidden to release their information including pictures to the public without their consent and knowledge.

 

*It’s all about fighting for the justice of every newborn in our country*

--Wabillahi Towfiq--

                                                                    Elmi Samatar
                                                                                elmileedo@yahoo.com