A team from the Ministry of Health will soon be dispatched to the Lethem Hospital to investigate complaints by residents that the institution, dubbed as a state-of-the-art facility when it was opened last year, is nothing but a health centre as more complaints surface.
A source at the ministry yesterday told Stabroek News that following publication of the complaints raised by residents in this newspaper on Sunday, an investigation will now be launched.
Meanwhile, recently-appointed Regional Health Officer, Dr Tracey Bovell, when approached yesterday for a comment referred all queries to the regional administration officer.
And Regional Executive Officer (REO) Donald Gajraj when approached said that all questions must be forwarded to him in writing and he had not read the Stabroek News article on the hospital so he could not offer a reaction.
Dr Bovell is one of the two doctors who recently returned from Cuba and residents have complained about the fact that two “junior doctors” are allowed to work without supervision and in many of the cases they only serve to sign referral letters to Boa Vista in Brazil or to Georgetown.
In a letter appearing in today’s newspaper Village Elder of the Nappi Village, Michael Abraham told the story of how the Head Teacher of the Konashen Primary School of the Wai Wai Village of Masskinyeri in the Upper Essequibo River has been waiting 10 months for an operation at the hospital.
According to Abraham, it takes as much as fourteen days of paddling to reach the village and since July 2009 Maribeth Singh has been making several trips to Lethem only to be told she has to return. He said Singh had visited a doctor at the hospital “about a condition peculiar to womankind” and she was advised that an operation had to be done as soon as the hospital’s theatre became fully operational.
“She is now into her tenth month of visiting this hospital whenever her pain becomes unbearable, which has become very frequent lately.
And up to now she has been unable to undertake this surgery, Abraham wrote.
He explained that the standard treatment the woman receives at the hospital is some pain killers or an injection to staunch the pain and excessive bleeding while no one has told her what exactly is her problem. The woman’s situation has worsened and she is wondering why the theatre is taking so long to become operational and why she has not been referred to Georgetown for the operation.
“Mrs Singh’s condition worsens with every passing month. She feels that no one has her interests at heart as her every visit to the hospital is met with the response of ‘come back again’, while no one takes the responsibility to fully explain the nature of her medical aliment,” Abraham wrote.
Theatre not
functioning
Stabroek News has been reliably informed that while the theatre is equipped with “some of the most expensive equipment” it has never operated since the hospital opened its doors.
“Basically all that is being done is the lights being turned on and then switched off again,” sources said yesterday.
Stabroek News has been informed about many other persons who have been promised that they would undergo surgeries at the theatre but they are still waiting.
According to reliable sources, for the theatre to function there is need for some modification to the way it was built since it is not operable as it is.
“The theatre does not have all the facilities that a theatre should have; there was need for some technical advice on how a theatre should be built while the hospital was being built. There will have to be some additional work for it to be operable,” one source said.
“So even if they have a surgeon and theatre nurses, which they don’t have right now, the theatre would not be able to operate,” another source said.
Others pointed out that the Lethem residents and those who depend on the hospital are worse off than when the old hospital was around because at the old hospital some basic surgeries could have been done.
No bed sheet
A blogger on the Stabroek News website related that he was hospitalised at the hospital and was forced to lie on a bed without any bed sheet “…the fans were not working, the washrooms are already malfunctioning, the nurses leave you to fend for yourselves.”
“I witnessed first-hand Amerindians from outlying villages being mistreated. A guy came into the hospital without eating utensils and a staffer (a janitor at that!) verbally abused the man for not bringing his utensils and refused to give him food. This guy was also forced to lie on a bed without any bed sheet,” the man wrote.
During a visit to the hospital yesterday Stabroek News witnessed first-hand that a pregnant woman who was transferred from the Aishalton Hospital had to be referred to Boa Vista because the two doctors were unable to handle a breech pregnancy.
And even as the woman was in the hospital’s delivery room awaiting transfer to Brazil Stabroek News observed that there was a huge crease between the door and the wall, where hinges attached the two, making it possible for someone on the outside to observe what is going on in the room.
When this was pointed out to one of the nurses on duty she told Stabroek News that the authorities were aware of the matter.
Meanwhile, this newspaper was told that the hospital’s laboratory has two technicians and some of the services it provides are liver and kidney function tests, complete blood count, pregnancy and HIV tests.
