My Take on the Exhibition of DelPHE Programme

Concord Times (Freetown)

Alusine Sesay

9 June 2011

opinion

Freetown — Since the end of the eleven-year rebel war in Sierra Leone, the British Government – perhaps as a result on the colonial ties – has been very much pivotal in the fight to achieving socio-economic development in the country. The Partnership in Higher Education (DelPHE) is one among many programmes that is being funded by the UK government to foster development in Sierra Leone.

DelPHE is a programme that is geared towards helping the government in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGS), and it is being managed by the British Council in Sierra Leone. It was launched in 2006 and constitutes eight projects including, reducing poverty and enhancing equity in the artisanal fisheries, alternative energy as part of the engineering core curriculum of the Government Technical institute, dual purpose goat development, and the investigation of the incidences of Vesico Vaginal Fistula in Sierra Leone.

To showcase how the projects have contributed to the economic and social development of Sierra Leone and to stimulate the interest of policy-makers and the donor community to fund further projects, the British Council on Friday May 3rd this year held a public exhibition of recorded successes made since the inception of the projects in 2006. The exhibition, which was hosted at the British Council Hall, Tower Hill in Freetown, attracted personalities from various walks of life, including academics, administrators, diplomats, farmers aw s well as the media. Fortunately, I was one of the journalists present at the occasion. The exhibition kicked-off with a display of video clips of successful projects being implemented in the country.

As a professional media practitioner, my experience was embittered with a display of a video image of dozens of fistula patients, queuing for treatment at a hospital with their faces exposed to viewers. Also, I saw a young lady on the screen, whether by her consent or not, her face exposed and seated with a swollen stomach in front of a clinic. Also, I saw another young lady on the screen, boldly expressing her appreciation for being relieved from the ailment.

My concern is, be it by consent or otherwise, it is very much unethical to display the full images of the patients on screen. The exhibition of those patients is grossly against the media code of ethics in Sierra Leone. Despite the media ethics, it is medically wrong to disclose the health status of a patient – let alone display his or her image on screen in the full view of the public. It is a complete humiliation of our African mothers because of poverty. Despite the poverty, our mothers deserve dignity and respect and not humiliation in public.

I am not opposing or frowning at the project being implemented in the country, but the manner in which our mothers were being exposed to ridicule. If ever such should take place, the faces of the patients must be blurred to prevent people from identifying them. Authoritatively, I can bet the project funders and coordinators that I can identify all those patients I viewed on screen wherever I happen to meet them in this country. They are not happy with their status and wouldn’t want it to be made public.

Critically looking at the disease itself, it has some psychological effect on those suffering from it and therefore should not be exposed to public view. According to my research, “VVF is an abnormal fistulous tract extending between the bladder and the vagina that allows the continuous involuntary discharge of urine into the vaginal vault. In addition to the medical sequelae from these fistulas, they often have a profound effect on the patient’s emotional well-being”.

Frankly speaking, I have been troubled by the images of those patients being paraded on screen in the name of public exhibition of successful projects. Though the project brought some relief to those people, but they would equally cause stigma and reduce their womanhood to public ridicule. What angered me most was that the nurses or doctors working in the said hospital may have, perhaps for one reason or the other, failed to brief the project coordinator on some of the ethics in the medical practice. To me it is very much unethical to even reveal the health status of your patient to someone else.

Most of those patients, I believe, would not like people to know that they are suffering from such embarrassing ailment. So embarrassing is the ailment that it would have been thinkable for the medical practitioners to prohibit the photographing of patients suffering from it. It is of course my humble appeal to the British Council to get a re-think and re-do the videos to conform to media and medical norms.

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