Since the storm and passion are virtually over, we can start seeing clearly, picking up the pieces, and doing damage repair.
But faced with the power of the social media powered by what the President Paul Biya terms the Android Generation, government communication machinery and strategy crumbled like a pack of cards; coming barely a month after the Head of State extolled the merits of a digital economy.
Before Yaounde knew it, the gory-graphic images of a one-of-its-kind surgery administered by a lay woman on the dead Monique Koumateke in a bid to rescue the babies (twins) in her womb within the confines of a public hospital, Lanquintini, in Douala caught world attention.
There was no CRTV (Radio and Television) and Cameroon Tribune to tell the public in real time whether mother and twins where alive or not, abandoned to their fate; whether the hospital authorities are to blame and whether such despicable spectacle within a referral public health service structure is a shining indicator of the breakdown of our health system.
The Littoral Governor's swipe at the social media for marketing the disgusting images demonstrated helplessness vis-a-vis a situation he could not control or clamp down via an administrative fiat: censure or the so called fifteen days renewable.
Where does the buck stop? The fact that the minister for health held a press conference over the vexing issue shows that the buck stops on his table.
He awkwardly tried to clear the air almost 72 hours after the event! Too little, too late. Ironically, Andre Mama Fouda, minister for health is one of the few ministers who communicate often!! Within that time the social media was awash with varied versions. Nature abhors a vacuum. The 72 hour vacuum must be filled by something or anything for a public hungry for information. The social media did just that.
Mark Twain famously stated that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. If ever there was a lie or disinformation from any quarter it was between the Clinique at Nylon (pre-natal and post-natal care) and Lanquintini Hospital. Where the doctors and medical personnel negligent? Where the medical personnel not duty conscious despite a recently signed ministerial circular instructing them to treat patients on emergency cases before demanding payment? Was the family negligent?
With the social media a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes (the reverse is also true) for this that public authorities particularly in countries South of the Sahara are still to grapple with the workings of this new medium of communication characterized by speed, sensation, hacking, fraud, spam, data or identity theft, fun, hype, grandstanding, information, and disinformation.
Why persons in countries south of the Sahara notably Cameroon tend to rely on social media for information is because the government either communicates poorly or deliberately distorts information. Cameroonians still have in the back of their minds, government’s version of violent events leading up to and during the launching of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) party in Bamenda in 1991; highly popularized but unpublished results of various commissions of inquiry; the obnoxious role of the ministers for communication and government spokespersons in the heady 90s till date and so on.
The problem? Government does not communicate and when it does, Cameroonians take it with a pinch of salt. So, in certain instances the government might be disseminating the truth but Cameroonians decide to look for the truth elsewhere (social media) because the government has a poor track record as far as communication is concerned.
The crux of the matter? How did such a macabre surgical operation take place within Lanquintini Hospital without intervention from any public quarter? On this score, the hospital and health authorities have a case to answer.
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