Delivery from Occam Industries

by Feòrag

Ghana: The nearest hospitals to Wulensi constituency are only accessible during the dry season. Even then, the journey takes between five and seven hours on roads which have not been repaired since they were built in colonial times. Not surprisingly, women in labour and snake bite victims die on a regular basis on their way to hospital. But the atrocious state of the infrastructure has nothing to do with it, as far as some locals are concerned. The member of Parliament (MP) for Wulensi, Wumbe Karim, used his maiden speech to explain:

Hear him: Because of lack of a hospital in Naum, these otherwise preventable deaths are often blamed on some poor old women for being the cause of such untimely deaths through witchcraft.

The member regretted that most often, the so-called witches are lynched or maimed while those of them who survive the venom of the aggrieved are banned from the towns and villages and sent to a so-called witches village.

At present, there are three witches' villages in the Wulensi constituency alone whose health status is very precarious.

Money has now been found to upgrade a health centre to a district hospital. Pregnant Women Dying in Wulensi - Ghanaian Chronicle (via allAfrica.com), 23rd July 2003.