The Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Rev Prof Charles Ansah, has urged religious leaders to focus on praying for the sick and allow medical professionals to do their work with the appropriate scientific methods.
He noted that under no circumstances should a pastor or a Mallam prevent any patient from taking his medication in the name of divine healing.
Speaking to Rev Dr Kwabena Opuni Frimpong on GTV’s “What is Next?”, Rev Prof. Ansah noted that it is medically wrong and religious leaders had no business in deciding how a patient should be treated.
“…I am a man of God, I believe in spiritual healing and divine intervention but God created us in his own image and has given us the wisdom so that we learn science and help ourselves with that. The medical doctors are well trained, they able to diagnose, they are able to prescribe the appropriate medication for the patient so if he or she is in hospital, what business have you to say that, I will take you from the hospital? Allow them to do what they can.”
“Working of medications and success in treatments is just like prayer. When you are praying about something, sometimes you instantly get an answer, sometimes it delays, sometimes it doesn’t come at all, in the same way, when you are given medication and it is not working immediately, it does not mean that it is not going to work and that is why doctors will ask you for review, from time to time, when you go and they think that they need to change the medication, they will change, healing will delay but it will surely come,” he added.
He further called on colleague pastors to desist from giving out anointing oil and holy waters to patients on admission at the hospital and allow doctors to employ scientific methods to cure them.
“It is criminal, you don’t have to do that, some of the concoctions sent to patients in the hospital, we don’t know what is in there, yet they smuggle them to the patient and even as the patient is taking the medication prescribed by the doctor, sometimes you find out that they are taking those medications as well, the doctors then comes and realize that what he recommended for the patient is not working and the patient will never tell the Doctor that, I am talking something else. Let us pray for them but let us also allow the doctors to treat our patients for us,” he noted.