Covid-19: Displaying Dead Bodies On TV Ethically Inappropriate – Clinical Psychologist To Bagbin

A Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Emmanuel Asampong has criticised the Second Deputy Speaker, Alban Bagbin’s call for the display of dead bodies resulting from COVID-19 on media platforms to enforce the message that the disease is real.

Dr. Asampong said it will be ethically inappropriate to adopt such a measure, given that it has the tendency of creating different problems for people.

“There are a number of ethical issues here. As a people, do we want to expose people like that? Our cultural sensitives will really frown on something like that. I really can understand the frustration that is associated with his speech but I think to a large extent people will not accept something like that. People will not even want to watch the dead body of someone they do not know. It could trigger all sorts of problems for people,” he argued.

The Nadowli Kaleo legislator had said his call was backed by the feedback he had received from the public on the disease.

“The important thing is that the people we are leading, they want to see. In fact, I want to see on Television some evidence of death because when you state that this number of people are dead but they are not seeing anything like that [it will not give them the shock of their life]. I believe in shock therapy. We need shock therapy to wake them up from slumber and make them know COVID-19 is real,” Mr. Bagbin had said.

Engage stakeholders

Dr. Asampong, on Eyewitness News, however, suggested other effective ways of raising awareness on the pandemic.

He indicated that the engagement of stakeholders in various sectors of the country will help in creating awareness of the disease.

“The society we find ourselves in have groups of people whom we can refer to as stakeholders and these stakeholders definitely have stakes in whatever is going on. Among these stakeholders are people who wield power and people who wield influence. How well have we involved these people in this whole exercise?”

“In the market, for example, there are market queens. And I do know that all the items you can find on the market have queens. These are personalities who wield some influence over their members so the question is how well do we involve these people. So for me, I think if the stakeholders are being engaged well, we should make some progress.

---citinewsroom