Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter carried in Stabroek News of Wednesday, September 21 captioned ‘There is a shortage of essential drugs in Region 5’ by Mr Harry Gill.
In his letter Mr Gill saw it fit to make several sweeping generalizations about the status of the health care system in the Region, the majority of which are amazingly based on a single personal experience he said he had at one institution. It is my view that in recent times more and more Guyanese are developing the perception that the political opposition finds it difficult to find hard evidence to support the allegations that they would like to make and are in fact reduced to making sweeping allegations based on nothing more than emotion and conjecture.
Mr Gill writes of a shortage of drugs at the Fort Wellington Hospital. As Regional Executive Officer, I have successfully exposed the inaccuracy of this claim before and I will not deal with this further, but merely draw the attention of the public to a recent highly successful health care exercise held in the Region on September 19 and 20 last. On these two dates the visiting overseas-based Bridges Global Medical Team and senior medical personnel from the Georgetown Hospital and the Fort Wellington Hospital held a medical outreach at the Fort Wellington Hospital during which they saw and treated over two thousand residents of the Region for a wide range of ailments. The visiting teams did not bring any drugs to Fort Wellington Hospital with them, yet each one of the two thousand odd patients who requested help from this outreach were supplied with all the medications prescribed by the doctors.
In the face of the spurious allegation by Mr Gill that there is a shortage of essential drugs in Region 5, where did the drugs to provide relief to two thousand odd people over a period of two days, come from? Out of thin air?
Mr Gill’s claim that the face masks given to his wife by staff at the Fort Wellington Hospital when she experiences attacks of asthma are unsanitary, is another case of a politician callously twisting the facts to support his theory.
These face masks, also known as nebulizers, are sterilized for re-use using highly expensive equipment at the hospital, bought incidentally, by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic during its term of office for the very purpose of ensuring that they can be re-used. Mr Gill wanted special treatment for his wife: brand new face masks to be immediately discarded after use (at least three during an hour and fifteen minutes of treatment) even though medical science has proven that it is impossible for nebulizers to host bacteria/germs during use and impossible for bacteria/germs to survive the rigorous process of sterilization after use.
In his letter he further alleged that only one thermometer was in use at the hospital at the time he visited. But I have been advised that this is standard procedure at the hospital. Nurses on duty specialize in the use of equipment. One nurse is assigned to take blood pressure, another is assigned to give the injection, another is assigned to dress injuries, and another to use the thermometer to take temperature. Consequently you will have just one thermometer in use at any one point in time.
Indeed I have been advised that if each nurse was given a thermometer in addition to other equipment while on duty, then this would increase the possibility of mistakes being made. But Mr Gill is not a medical professional and instead of accepting this and seeking clarifications he chooses to speak from the bottomless depths of his ignorance on such issues.
His portrayal of the status of the Health Centre at Bath Settlement West Coast Berbice though is downright dishonest. The Health Centre at Bath Settlement was built by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic while in government, smack in the middle of a catchment area (Woodley Park to Catherina’s Lust) which was already being effectively served by the Woodley Park Health Centre. Its construction at that location amounted to a redundancy, since the population was already being adequately served. Contrary to his allegation that this Health Centre is being neglected by this Regional administration, this facility was put into operation in August of this year.
Because of its location in a catchment area already being adequately served, our health care people have literally had to beg people to come to this Health Centre for treatment. I am advised that on any given clinic day not more than four or five people would turn up for treatment. Instead of saying, as he alleges, that the Centre is being ignored by the Regional administration because it is located in a PPP/C stronghold, he should ask why it was built in that location in the first place.
This Health Centre at Bath Settlement is in fact a glaring example of the arrogant misuse of public funds for tenuous political gains employed by the former administration.
His puzzlement over why patients from the New Amsterdam and Georgetown Hospitals are being referred to the Fort Wellington and Mahaicony Hospitals for drugs again reveals his lack of understanding of how the system operates. When staff at the Georgetown Hospital or New Amsterdam Hospital finishes diagnosing patients, if they are residents of Region 5, they don’t give them medication, they send them back to Region 5 to collect the medication.
I am advised that on some days staff at Fort Wellington Hospital get countless referrals from the Georgetown and New Amsterdam hospitals and this influx can cause drugs on the shelves to be fully used up on a given day. However, those who do not get medication on that day are requested to return the very next day to collect their medication and they do get their medication without fail.
Editor, it is indeed a sad day when an educated person who is a Member of Parliament can feel free to jump to conclusions based on emotion and conjecture rather than on verified facts.
Yours faithfully,
Ovid Morrison
Regional Executive Officer
Region 5
