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Spare Not The Rod Of Fear If It Works

Written by Pio Sioa
Thursday, 03 July 2008
The reference in the bible is supposed to be, “Spare Not The Rod and Spoil The Child.” But some frustrated health educators must have decided the Lord should have said, “Spare Not The Rod And Spoil The Fear For Those Who Do Not Drink Their Filarisis Tablets” The reasoning is probably because the revised version opens it up to a much wider reach. In that case then, perhaps the wisdom should be a valid enough excuse to tamper with the Lord’s Word. The ‘COULD NOT BE BOTHERED crowd are the real heathens for the disciples of healthy living. There are indeed quite a few of them around. Raise your hand please if you are one of them! Parents can march the young ones by the ear to the assigned locations for people to go and take their tablets, but who can do that to reluctant parents and other grown ups? This is probably where the fear factor is brought into play. The rod of fear is always a very persuasive tactic and our health agitators probably know much better than anyone else about it. What do you think explains all those gruesome footage they have been replying over and over on television, of old men dragging bloated feet around? Surely, even the blind and the deaf could not escape the tedious repetitions of the horror of the disease if you do not take your medicine! Maybe in that respect our health agitators could be spared a kind thought for doing a butchers job on our deep-seated fears. Drink those tablets or you’ll grow elephant legs. So who wants to be half elephant? The tablet drinking exercise demanded that everyone should turn up to take his or her tablets. Failure to do so and you will miss out, which was unfortunate. There was no talking the administering health officials out of it. They were not even allowed to use personal discretion or willing enough to be flexible in a case-by-case situation regardless of the legitimacy of the reason. Apparently this was done in past tablet taking campaigns but people were not drinking them, thus the hardline approach. This time the mindset appeared to settle on, ‘we don’t care whether you take your tablet or not but you are not taking any home.” Sadly this kind of hard-nosed approach is not going to work. If they think the element of fear will guarantee 100% obedience, or compliance that is wishful thinking. It is also doubtful they will improve much on their rate of success this time around. One of the key factors for the campaign to be successful is that everyone drinks their tablets. If anyone in the family misses out, and that person happens to carry the f-worm, the whole family will be re-infected again, that was part of the warning. It is as simple as a mosquito bite. It is not beyond any stretch of imagination to believe that by now those tablet drinkers from yesterday are already re-infected because a person in the family missed out on the tablet drinking exercise. Could that have been avoided if the health officials were allowed to be flexible or to exercise personal discretion? Which is the better option, family members returning home with tablets for the others to drink or none at all? Well the last one is not an option really so strike that out. Why the officials are not willing to grant the people the benefit of the doubt is a wonder. What is a lot more serious is the effectiveness of the campaign. It is pointless to mount a campaign of this magnitude if it lacks the kind of flexibility and consideration to do everything possible to make it work. If people are going to be re-infected as soon as the health officials turn their backs, the whole effort was a waste of time. Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment Name Email Title Comment
Last Updated ( Thursday, 03 July 2008 )

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