Fare thee well, Moemedi

| Wednesday August 18, 2010 00:00

This debate caught up because a young bubbly boy, Moemedi Maphanyane, was diagnosed with a debilitating kidney and lung failure condition.

Last week, that young man whose condition helped the nation to awake to the plight of people who live with kidney problems, passed away in a hospital in Johannesburg due to a lung infection.

Our hearts go out to his family who tried everything they could to get the brave young boy a lung and a kidney.Fortunately, it was a successful transplant and that is why he lived a productive life until his life was unexpectedly snapped away from us last week. Moemedi might be dead, but his life and his battle for better health should continue to be a reminder to all of us, that Batswana and the coming generation deserve better.

The afflictions that Moemedi suffered should not be visited upon any other Motswana.  In Moemedi's life we should have all seen the shortcomings of our health system in providing for people who need kidney transplants and other organs.   It does not speak well of us when we see our brothers and sisters having to go to far away places to have the transplants.

The medical costs of such an operation are prohibitive and many of our people are forced to just waste away because they do not have the wherewithal to afford a kidney transplant.

The kind of caring and egalitarian society that we want to build in Botswana puts human life and health above everything else. Similarly, our pursuits and investment should be in the area of protecting human life. It is depressing to see that many years after the Moemedi instigated debates, we still have Batswana who beg for donations to go for transplants.  No one will deny that transplants are by nature very expensive, but if we as a nation decide to put human health first, we should be doing better than we are.

The tragedy of this whole thing is that many more people who cannot afford kidney transplants die in a vegetative state and we refuse to accept that this is how Botswana should fare. Batswana want better and they should surely get far much better than they are getting.

It is not an excuse that kidney transplant is expensive.  The Ministry of Health should be more proactive and find ways of starting an organ bank.  Of course, the private sector should be lauded since Bokamoso Private Hospital has since installed a dialysis machine, which will go a long way in the management of kidney-related diseases.

                                                                     Today's thought

                                               ' The real malady is fear of life, not of death.'

                                                             -  Naguib Mahfouz