‘Liberia in serious trouble’

– former Sen. Candidate warns

A former senatorial candidate from River Cess County, Madam Rosana H.D. Schaack, has warned that “Liberia is in serious trouble” due to lack of well trained health workers here. She vied for the senate in 2014, but lost.

“Health care is important too, but if we do not have well trained health workers, as is the problem at hand, Liberia is in serious trouble,” Madam Schaack told reporters in Paynesville Tuesday, June 30.

Giving a scenario of what happened in the health sector during the Ebola crisis that killed more than 4,000 victims; the Executive Director of Touching Humanity In Need of Kindness or THINK Liberia, said as a professional nurse, she was appalled at the caliber of nursing students across the country.

Madam Schaack argued that people are dying daily here because the health service providers do not know what they are doing or what they are supposed to be doing.

“Wearing colorful scrubs or sparkling white uniforms is not what nursing is about. Nursing is about making sure your client receives the best of care in a loving and caring manner,” she stressed.

Explaining further, she noted that many people complain about the manner of approach of health workers at health facilities, and most times other try to treat themselves rather than go to the health facilities to seek help.

In her analysis of Liberia’s education sector, she observes that students jumping from grade to grade contribute to mass failure during entrance examinations to institutions of higher learning or even the WAEC Exams.

“If the student doesn’t get the foundation of a good primary education,” she argued that junior high, high school and tertiary levels will be problematic, warning, “unprepared work force is no work force at all.”

She emphasized the need to have books, science laboratories, up-to-date libraries, equipment for teaching Fine Arts, and making learning interesting and appealing to students.

In rural Liberia, she says the situation is worse, and most of the elementary and junior high schools she has visited in River Cess County have two teachers each, except one school in Kahngbo Town with six teachers.

Additionally, she complains on issue of rape here, saying there are not much judges at different courts handling rape cases to reduce the dockets.

She said the court term runs sometimes three months, and where you have a judge handling all rape cases, it poses a serious challenge, especially if they have to go for break at the end of the court term.

As an advocate and activist for human rights and gender equality in Liberia, she condemned in the strongest term, “the increasing incidence of rape and sexual violence perpetrated against women children, especially girls.”

“These brutal acts have caused the deaths of over 15 children in the past two years. Dress code is not an excuse for this form of human rights violation”, she insisted. 

By Winston W. Parley