Religion should not bar one from seeking health-care
By Chrispory Juma Ombuya
When a couple in Kirinyaga vowed to disown its children if they are immunized against polio, measles and other diseases, it highlighted how extremist religious beliefs have continued to endanger public health. It becomes more dangerous for people who can not make independent choices, like the children.
I would not get drawn into the controversies that have surrounded vaccination from days gone but rather look at why our faith should not compromise our inherent right of access to quality health care. We have heard of cases of HIV/AIDS positive people who abandon ARV treatment to depend on faith healing and those who end up dying of curable diseases. There are those who do not seek treatments for the slightest of ailments like headaches or fevers but instead view them as signs of God’s impending punishments.
Sadly enough, most of these diseases are infectious and therefore for purposes of health of the general public. Access to quality health care is a universal human right and every government has a responsibility to provide it to its people. The people should hold their governments to account for the services they offer. It becomes a tragedy when governments have to push their people to enjoy these rights, even dragging them to court.
Religion, more-so Christianity, should be a source of hope and healing but not confusion and primitivity. There is no faith that doesn’t teach about good health. The Bible itself rates health right near the top of the list in importance. The Bible lists a number of things that man is forbidden to eat or not allowed to do for the purposes of always staying healthy.
God promises to restore our health and heal all our wounds (Jeremiah 30:17). By the grace of God then, we should seek treatment. Humans treat but God heals. Prayer healing itself alone, to me, is like the story of the proverbial potter who believes that it is God who is to get the clay and mould it for him to get the pot. Ronald Reagan once said, “God helps those who help themselves.”
Religion and science are inseparable. Albert Einstein once said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Indeed, if you are promoting a religion that runs counter to scientific knowledge, you will have to be not only blind, but cut off from all sensory awareness to maintain it. If your religion lives in this real, material world, then it must take into account the real, material facts about this world. If there is a common understanding that a disease kills, it very moral of all people to participate in eradicating it.
The writer is an Environmental Health Officer based in Oyugis, Kenya.
