Hospital abuses attract CHRAJ attention

The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has charged people in the nursing profession to show respect to all manner of patients.

CHRAJ said nurses as caregivers must do well not to make anyone feel unwelcome at their health facilities as this amount to abuse of basic human rights.

Speaking at the opening of the Commission’s Basic Human Rights Course for Health Professionals for student nurses at the Kumasi Nursing and Midwifery Training College, the Deputy Commissioner, Richard Ackom Quayson, stated that the Commission was concerned about conducts that undermined human rights at the various health facilities.

According to him, many hospitals in recent time had registered numerous practices that undermined human rights, and added that the perpetrators do so either ignorantly or willfully.

He defined human right abuse as any activity, action, gesture or behaviour that detrimentally affects another person’s total well-being.

“It could be the slightest thing at the OPD or a ward, supposed harmless statement to obvious negative attitude,” the CHRAJ Commissioner noted.

Mr Quayson said the training course was aimed at equipping trainees with basic human rights knowledge to enable them to understand the rights of patients and how health care service impacts on those rights.

He explained that the course formed part of the overall objective of the Commission to promote and deepen the culture of respect for human rights in Ghana amongst healthcare professionals in particular to empower them to promote and protect the rights of patients and the vulnerable.

The CHRAJ Deputy Commissioner pointed out that some health professionals engaged in all forms of abuses and mentioned physical, sexual, psychological and medical abuses of patients and their relations.

According to him, physical assault of patients by nurses, undue restriction of patients and overbearing attitude were a commonality among health personnel, asserting that, in some cases, patients were subjected to degrading and cruel treatment.

“The case of the male nurse who drugged and had sex with a female patient at a health facility at Daboase comes to mind whenever the issue of sexual abuse is raised,” he noted.

In his view, the right to health was critical to human life and foundational to all human rights and therefore health care delivery should be in the right measure, at the right time, in the right manner and under the right circumstances.

Mr Quayson indicated that the programme since its inception in 2005 had been of immense benefits to many nurses from health institutions and colleges.