You
know you've gone too far, when as a society, your response to a man who has
been doing surgical procedures on your kin and kith, without ever setting foot
in a medical institution as a student, is: "Rule Over Us!''.
Ronald Kiprotich
Melly, 28, had been carrying out medical procedures and delivering babies by
caesarean section at the Meteitei sub-County hospital in Nandi, where he had been promoted to the rank of Medical Superintendent.
Eventually, as
luck would have it, this borderline butcher was stopped in his tracks by the
Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentist's Board offices where he had been
tricked to believe he was going to renew his "permanent" medical license.
When
news of his arrest broke in.the media, I was relieved to know that nobody would
ever again risk the pain of endangering their lives under the scalpel of a wannabe
medic.
However, my relief was short lived when his community in Nandi went to receive the unlicensed operator after the local Court released him on a ksh. 500,000 bail. His community hailed him as a local hero, and vouched to elect him as their local leader.
If a man has the
nerve to lie to you on a matter as life-endangering as performing surgery on a
disease ravaged individual, what will he possibly do while in political office?
Would you ever accuse him of misusing your funds or lack of integrity?
What really, do we
stand for as a society? Has our moral compass completely lost its
bearing? Do we even know our right from our left? Does anything matter?
How botched up is
our value system? Is anything sacred?
If Medics with
years of learning still, unfortunately, manage to botch up surgical procedures,
what can we say of a guy, whose surgical exposure does not go beyond ER on TV
and possibly Google University?
To have to keep
looking over my shoulder to double check that the medic, the pilot, the butcher
the milk vendor... are legit, is an exhausting, and possibly futile exercise. We really must
decide the kind of world we want to live in.
This monster we
are feeding, when we facilitate corruption, help our children cheat in their
exams or award Tenders and contracts to shoddy service providers, is fattening ourselves for the day when the monster demands our own blood, body
and soul.
The seeds of
dishonesty that we are planting and watering so liberally, will in the fullness
of time, bear fruit, much fruit.
