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Momodou
Denmark
11787 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Sep 2007 : 21:12:09
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RE-DOSH Refutes Foroyaa Report
Bubacarr K. Sowe
Below is a rejoinder sent to Daily Observer for publication in response to an article they published on Friday entitled “DOSH Refutes Foroyaa Report”.
The article is yet to be published by Daily Observer.
Foroyaa had published in its Wednesday 12 September 2007 edition an article entitled “Gambia Falls Short on Health Expenditure.” The Director of Planning and Information at the Department of State for Health reacted by sending a letter to Daily Observer claiming that the statement is not accurate. This led to the following response by the author of the article.
Please refer to your article entitled “DOSH Refutes Foroyaa Report” published in Vol. 15, No. 100 of Daily Observer, dated 14 September 2007.
The author of the letter you published noted: “Your recent statement on the issue does not seem to report accurately the findings of the NHA.”
I have attached a photo-copy of some of the presentations at the workshop for you to compare them with the article I wrote. You judge for yourself whether there is any inaccuracy in the report. It is rather unfortunate that the Director of Planning and Information has not indicated what is inaccurate in the Foroyaa report. There is nothing in this report which defers from the presentations at the workshop.
I also stated in the report that “…It was only Cape Verde who met the WHO recommendation during the years covered by the NHA study.” The director cannot deny this statement.
I do not also expect the Director to deny that the recommendations that I listed are among the recommendations forwarded. You can also see that the Total Health Expenditure figures in the Foroyaa report are the same with those in the documents attached. The Foroyaa report is accurate. This is the first point to note.
Secondly the Director has called on Foroyaa to stop publishing portions of NHA report as the final document has not yet been published.
Foroyaa does not have access to the final report. Whatever Foroyaa has published was derived from the presentations of the resource persons at the workshop who repeatedly made references to the NHA report. The resource persons or organisers of the workshop did not caution reporters not to publish portions of the NHA
report. Hence to indicate that Foroyaa is wrong in publishing portions of the report is grossly unfair.
The Director also claimed that “Extracting portions without reporting on the full story tends to give wrong information.” This is sometimes true.
However, one can extract information or data from a report to make a point. What I wrote was not an attempt to summarise what transpired at the workshop. I simply made a point, that Gambia among other nations have fallen short on a WHO recommended expenditure target. I used the information presented at the workshop to back my
point. It is now evident that if there is an error it must have arisen from the resource persons themselves.
Furthermore, there is no need for the Director to take this rejoinder to Daily Observer because Foroyaa does not suppress an article because it was critical of it.
Source: Foroyaa Newspaper Burning Issue
Issue No. 110/2007, 19 -20 September 2007
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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