Dear Editor,
On Tuesday, 02nd April, I rushed my six-year-old daughter to the Leonora Hospital after she started to complain of abdominal pain. There were about ten people ahead of us and it took nearly one hour before a doctor could look at her. After hearing the complaints, the Cuban doctor recommended that some tests be done on her. We went to the lab and there we observed the door locked and the receptionist nearby said we would have to wait or come back at one o’clock because the staff had gone to lunch.
Now, I was amazed because this is a hospital that is supposed to work twenty-four hours a day and I wondered why, with so many young people who have finished school and university and are finding it difficult to get a job in Guyana, why one of them could not be given either a permanent or temporary job to help address this embarrassment. Here we have a matter that I considered to be an emergency and having to wait one whole hour for a healthy person to come back.
Whilst waiting, I observed a young woman going to the receptionist and asking for some list for the tablets so that she could go and purchase them. She complained that since that morning she was at the hospital and she was waiting for tablets and she couldn’t wait anymore. During that time someone waiting pointed out that the letterhead that the doctor had written on for the test was for the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH), so when the receptionist was asked she said that she didn’t know if the test could be done at Leonora Hospital because the lab that is opposite her in the same room where she works functions sometime and sometimes it doesn’t. Because of my daughter’s condition, we decided to journey to WDRH to avoid more time wasting. After waiting for a period of time and witnessing those waiting for test results and tests complaining about the time they were waiting, the tests were finally conducted and we were told to come back the next day, same time for the results. We were told that because the doctor didn’t indicate emergency on the paper, our case was not an emergency.
Now, with all the numerous infant deaths and lame excuses, do you think that incidents like this could be one of the main contributing factors?
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates
