Morality should drive the Medical Profession

The Sunday Mail's story on Joseph Michael Swango, an American serial killer Doctor, who preyed on his patients at Mnene Mission Hospital in Mberengwa, makes for sad reading, provoking emotions of anger against such malevolent medical practitioners. Dr Swango was involved in about 60 intentional fatalities and food poisonings of patients and colleagues at work.

This Swango character, which should have swung in the gallows long back, willfully administered lethal injections to patients for him to derive incredible pleasures and thrills out of killing innocent lives. He was imprisoned for five years in USA for poisoning co-workmates whom he gave coffee at the workplace.

The issue for concern is how Zimbabwe authorities could have contracted someone with such a long history of killing patients.
 
The other nerve tinkling issue which bedeviled Zimbabwe is the violation of patients' rights between 1986 and 1990 by a British-born anaesthetist, Dr Richard McGown, a white doctor who admitted before the courts of carrying out illegal anaesthetic experiments in pain control on 500 patients, three of whom died.

These medical experiments were undertaken without following laid-down procedures to discover new ways of managing pain. Dr McGowan was particularly interested in experiments on black women.  He was investigated on allegations of negligence, gross incompetence and disgraceful conduct.

McGown was ultimately found guilty of culpable homicide due to experiments on his patients and sentenced to six months in prison. He was convicted in January 1995 on two out of five counts of culpable homicide after the court ruled he had negligently administered "dangerous doses of morphine" to patients.  This physician had arrogantly pleaded not guilty to all counts. He was slapped with a 12-month jail term of which six were suspended and fined $1 250 Dollars for the deaths of two children, Kenyan-born Lavender Khaminwa aged 10 and two-year old Kalpesh Nagidas, a Zimbabwean of Indian origin.

Dr McGowan began administering epidural morphine to children in 1981 on his own initiative, arguing that since it worked on adults, it would also work on children. He also admitted to having carried out anaesthetic experiments on more than 500 patients without their knowledge. This was a gross lack of ethical conduct, as defined by the Hippocratic oath, to which medical personnel are supposed to subscribe.

Dr McGown's actions disillusioned many Zimbabweans who felt that he should have been charged with premeditated murder instead of culpable homicide. During the trial, the then Zimbabwe's Attorney General Patrick Chinamasa, who headed the prosecution team, described the anesthetist as ‘a messenger of death stalking our hospitals'.

Surely, this makes citizens lose faith in services they receive from medical practitioners. Medical doctors are one of the greatest pillars of society. All people look-up to them for the continuity of their lives. They are in actual fact saviours of our lives. But all, this was contrary to the wicked pair of Drs Swango and McGown.

The medical profession should be driven by morality.  It subscribes to a body of ethical statements developed primarily for the benefit of patients. As a member of this profession, a physician must recognize responsibility to patients first and foremost, as well as to society, to other health professionals instead of to self.

A physician should be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights. The doctor is expected to uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception to appropriate entities. They are under obligation to respect the law, and to recognize the moral duty of care for a patient.

In view of the unethical conduct by these doctors, it is also mind boggling to note that strong rumours making rounds in Harare allege that, local doctors, particularly gynecologists, are administering drugs to pregnant women, which may induce complications prior to delivery, ultimately leading to caesarian operations. This type of delivery enables physicians to earn more from the patient than a normal delivery. It is our prerogative, as society, to weed out such vices if ever they exist amongst us. We need to keep our eyes open for such culprits so that we nip this rot in the bud.

The case of Dr Swango and Dr McGown demands that we keep medical practitioners under constant check in order to safeguard human lives. Due diligence should be done when the Ministry of Health employs expatriates. Dr Swango's record of killing patients was a matter of public record in the USA and he was imprisoned for such malpractices. Unfortunately, upon his engagement in Zimbabwe, no thorough background checks were done to ascertain his professional competency. This should never be allowed to happen again in Zimbabwe.

Patients are urged to be on the watch-out for such ill-intentioned doctors and report them immediately for justice to take place.

Morality should drive the medical profession. However, the government also has an obligation to ensure that doctors are paid well in order to avert such malpractices, which may sway them towards ripping off patients through devious means, thereby exposing their health to vulnerability of medical vultures.