Whiles Forum commend good number of our medics for maintaining their professionalisms in the continuing national campaign, there are growing suspicions of members of the public that there are gross flout of medical professional ethics in the war on Covid-19 in Sierra Leone, which is procrastinating the end of the fight.

Personal details that do not require a third party attention or the public, except a highly trusted closed relation of the individual directly involved. These must be made very much confidential in all forms by doctors, nurses and lab technicians who mostly run their mouths in the private medical details of patients.

Such is not ethical and health must curb that now going forward to restore public confidence and ease the burden of people being afraid of revealing their private medical status to medical practitioners for fear of being exposed to the public.

Moreover, privacies relating to patients personal Covid-19, HIV/AIDS and other status are essential elements in any national campaign, especially the Covid-19 pandemic if at all we were to collectively succeed in defeating the common enemy, and by extension encouraging suspected cases to confidently come forward to testing to ascertain their coronavirus Covid-19 status. Provided their privacies are confidentially kept secretly by medical professionals.

Professionalism in the campaign is very much relevant predominantly in the existing health emergency circumstance, wherein people are now afraid of coronavirus because medics couldn’t protect their privacies after being tested.

Sierra Leone has in the last few weeks been battling with most dangerous and deadly Indian delta Covid-19.

Although the National Covid-19 Emergency Response Centre (NaCOVERC) in collaboration with the line Ministry of Health and Sanitation along with development partners have handled and to some extent brought the situation under control, with a downward trend cases recorded on daily basis.

Nonetheless nobody should be complacence about gains made so far therefore firm cautions must be strictly taken, with all guards up along the fight against the pandemic. This does not in any way put patients’ personal health status in the public domain. The privacy of infected people must be kept closed to the chest of medics and their auxiliary workers including lab technicians, from the doctors down to the least nursing aide.

For there are so much in the public domain about the particulars of persons which must have been placed there by medical practitioners, which speaks poorly of the unprofessionalism in handling situations around people with such challenges. Again these are not ethical at all and can protract the war on Covid-19. So medics must go highly professional and help save the country from the pandemic.  In other words, the exposures of such critical private details of people must stop even though it has become a norm for certain people working within the sector.

Since the eradication of HIV/AIDS in the early 90s, healthcare workers have always been in the habits of exposing the private medical status of people to unconnected persons for reasons best known to them, which is unacceptably unprofessional, unethical and it is not good at all for any emerging medical or health challenge. Although these acts caused a lot of stigma for people, yet is has secretly existed within the health sector for far too long with little or no firm actions from healthcare delivery authorities in Sierra Leone.

On the other hand the privacy status of infected persons of be it Covid-19, HIV/AIDS, the then EVD and other deadly killer diseases, are only coming to light now amid the alarming Covid-19 campaign. The more reasons health authorities should bring a permanent end to it now, so as to enhance more disease surveillances in the country.

Most times photos sick people appear on social media either on operating theatres, or on beds in hospitals within the country, which doctors can hardly decline lack of knowledge about such unethical behaviours of their junior workers.

These new media contents are always shared viral on but sadly for the victims no actions follow such unethical messes from health workers. And most times the victims are scornfully stigmatised due to systems failures right from the top.

Health workers should therefore bear in mind that people and their relatives have rights to privacies and won’t want any form of stigma after their recovery from ailments, consequently particulars relating to their health status should not be exposed in the public to humiliate them and their loved ones.

Moving forward, Forum hereby suggests to the line ministry along with its partners in the national campaign to ensure that they drastically reduce stigma by protecting the privacies of sick people from the public domain, as it happen in other parts of the world. The disclosure of one’s private medical status is a breach of ethical code of conduct in the medical profession and misplace of confidence.

Therefore doctors and nurses assigned at medical facilities across charged with the tasks of handling Covid-19 lab results should henceforth maintain the highest level of professional standards in the discharge of their duties to restore credibility and restore public confidence at its highest peak. For the unprofessional disclosures of somebody’s private medical status in the public domain can be sued in the court of law. Hence save your profession from misconduct, shame and keep your ethics right up.

A word to the wise…

Read on.