Dear Editor,
It is unthinkable that eight people in Region One got very ill with an unknown malady, (probably a viral attack, which are usually very communicable) and they were brought to the Georgetown Public Hospital, an institution I question has the competence to quarantine them effectively, until the test results are all in.
Yesterday, the Stabroek News, in an article captioned, “Samples from manganese miners sent to CARPHA for tests,” reported that, “As the Ministry of Public Health seeks to diagnose the illness that led to the death of a Guyana Manganese Incorporated (GMI) worker and the hospitalisation of 13 others, samples taken from them have been sent to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) for additional tests.”
These people were in Region One at a mine in the interior and, therefore, by definition, they were in a location where they could have been effectively quarantined and tested until the diagnosis was complete. Instead, these people brought them to the most populated place in the country (Georgetown) to the Public Hospital, where a proper quarantine is at best questionable and at worst nonexistent, endangering all of us.
It is total incompetence and makes it extremely dangerous to live in a country where this can happen! No diagnosis has as yet been made and to compound the problem, they are now taking some of the 13 people now infected to the West Demerara Hospital for a yet undisclosed reason!
I am a 73-year-old man with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from smoking for 40 years. Can anyone guess what my chances would be if this respiratory infection gets hold of me? To make matters worse—and now in good faith, I am quoting from the Stabroek News, which I presume is reproducing accurately what they have been told by the Ministry of Health— “None of the 13 hospitalised miners, Dr. Cummings a junior minister of the government noted, have been discharged as she explained that they are still being evaluated. She said those who were not critical were transported to the West Demerara Regional Hospital, where they are being monitored. Those who were in a critical state, she added, were kept at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).” Some are still in a critical state, Editor?
Now, we come to the most frightening part of the report: “Eight of the miners reportedly fell ill during the course of last week and were admitted to the Pakera District Hospital in Region One with fever, headaches, joint pain, mild shortness of breath, unstable vital signs and moderate to severe respiratory syndrome. One subsequently died.”
Editor, your paper printed this, so I assume that the reporters were accurately relaying what they were told by the ministry, and Stabroek News has proved over time to be very reliable in its reporting. So let me ask, how is it possible that people with fever, headaches, joint pain, mild shortness of breath, can also remain hospitalised today in a critical state, and if they are only experiencing mild shortness of breath, how is it possible that their vital signs are unstable and have moderate to severe respiratory syndrome?
This is the type of nonsense the Guyanese people are fed daily— reports which defy all logic or intelligence— and incredibly, they can’t wait one second on the road to be courteous and law-abiding and obey the traffic laws, but they accept this reckless endangerment to them and their children, without question!
I am a Guyanese. When I left Guyana in 2008 to live in the USA, I never applied for a green card, which would have cost me very little. I instead held my Guyana Passport and applied at considerable expense for an H1B Visa to live and work in the USA as an investor. I live here by choice, and I have been waiting hopefully to see things change, but they are just not changing for the better, only for the worse.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
