[dropcap]U[/dropcap]ndeniably, government after Saint Lucia government has dropped the healthcare ball, despite titillating election promises, despite altogether avoidable patient deaths. Truth be told, I cannot recall a time when the island was not in dire need of adequate medical facilities. As far back as the early Eighties, the consensus was that Victoria Hospital had run its course and needed, at the very least, a total make-over. In 1988 a desperate Romanus Lansiquot, in his capacity as health minister, had raised via numerous sponsored walks and other strategies, one million dollars in the name of improvements to the hospital. I remember well his confiding in me that Prime Minister John Compton had promised him, if he raised a million dollars, to provide additional funds for repairs to the old facility, if not to construct another, altogether new. Yes, that was some 30 years ago. And Lord alone knows where the money went!
Meanwhile there was St Jude hospital, generally praised although, as it later turned out, quite possibly a killer in disguise. Who knows how many unsuspecting Saint Lucians went there to be successfully treated for a broken arm, a sprained ankle, an ulcer or a cutlass wound then returned home to die not long afterwards from asbestos poisoning? Not until the hospital burned down, ostensibly because of faulty wiring (the standard cause for nearly every local fire) was the hidden asbestos exposed. I need add the hospital was not insured.
No need to detail the rest of the sick story. Suffice it to say that after a year of seeking to resurrect St Jude (patients were moved to the nearby George Odlum Sports Stadium—three to a funeral home), the Kenny Anthony government that had been maliciously campaigning for salutary action on the part of its cash-strapped predecessors months after the fire took over responsibility for the island, including its health. Five years later, millions of dollars having been unaccountably spent, not to mention at least three highly publicized hand-on-chest promises, Saint Lucians are still without the “state of the art hospital” they were led to believe they would have before the end of 2015.
The Allen Chastanet government took office on 6 June 2016 and soon afterward declared the St. Jude structure a sub-standard monstrosity monitored and created by inept individuals not nearly qualified to undertake the task they’d been given at great cost to the public purse. Further work was suspended while the new government pondered a way forward. The now opposition Labour Party had much to say about the work stoppage but little about why the “state of the art hospital” it promised was at best half done. The latest related brouhaha involves—of all people—the Medical and Dental Association as protesters in the name of healthcare for the people.
Perhaps coincidentally, the more vocal and conspicuous of the group include the husband of a former attorney general associated with Kenny Anthony’s Labour government, reportedly at war with the present administration for diverse reasons; an architect associated with a firm long considered synonymous with Labour administrations, especially those led by Kenny Anthony—alas, now complaining about being shut out by the Chastanet government in favor of contractors aligned to the yellow flag; the wife of a former minister in the Kenny Anthony administration; an individual who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time publishing on Facebook angry prescriptions for sick and shut-out Red Zoners.
One of the activist-doctors, perhaps anticipating the obvious, this week issued the following: “I know people are going to ask, ‘Why now?’ Just let me just [sic] say to everybody: We [his fellow medic-activists] have been working behind the scenes. Perhaps we are being seen a lot more now but this is just part of a continuous plan to improve healthcare for the people.”
Yeah, right. Working behind the scenes? When? With whom? Does that mean the MDA shares responsibility for the controversial St. Jude structure? Does it mean the MDA stood silently by while the last Kenny Anthony administration served empty promises to Saint Lucians, knowing full well they would not, or could not, be delivered before the end of 2015—if at all?
Consider this Facebook entry by one of the now out of the closet activist-doctors. It is written in the peculiar style of FB’s literary politicians: “Is it true that the plan is to use the OKEU for those who have Platinum Insurance policies and tourists while Victoria Hospital will be given a paint job and be kept to attend to those who can only afford subsidized care and unable to pay? Isn’t it true that all services transferred to the OKEU hospital shall be returned to Victoria Hospital? Nancy Charles, let him know [him?] that I was born in this land and I go die in this land; politicians may try to victimize me but no one, I mean no one shall run me off this land. St Lucia is our homeland and India is theirs [theirs?]. We won’t tolerate the disrespect being displayed toward our fellow colleagues. Tic tock, tic toc . . .”
What does any of that have to do with healthcare? Sounds to me more like a personal gripe from a hate dispenser!
Now I am not saying doctors should be denied their constitutional right to dissent for whatever reason, including over matters related to healthcare in Saint Lucia. But I dare to say they have, as doctors, a particular responsibility. To illustrate my concern: say Allen Chastanet were to fall unconscious
outside his Government Buildings office and had to be rushed to a local medical facility. And say he could not be revived. What would be the reaction of at least half of this politically polarized nation of ours if it should turn out the local doctor who penned the above-reproduced Facebook posting had attended to the sick prime minister?
Doctors, even when they protest, should always be perceived first as doctors. Not as campaigning politicians in disguise. I suggest the MDA guerrillas would be far more effective and credible if they would, reminiscent of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., collectively determine to suffer the sacrifice of cutting their regular fees by half; make house calls in our most deprived areas; offer free services to the elderly and babies . . . I believe the press and populace would greedily embrace such a move. Besides, it would work wonders for the MDA membership’s credibility, not to say the sincerity of their abruptly undertaken cause. Such a move might even set the politically ambitious halfway toward accomplishing their dreams.
As for our government, nothing in what I’ve written above should be taken to mean other than that we the people are in desperate need of a hospital that is more than a building. We cannot afford the luxury of lengthy and seemingly pointless discussions with countless parties, home and abroad, not when our people are sick and dying for lack of medical attention.
No Saint Lucian woman should have to die at a roadside in the process of bringing a baby into this world, however selfish and hypocritical. Surely, one such occurrence is more than enough.
