Dear Editor,

THE Suddie Hospital is presently without dental injections, and when supplies would be made available remains unknown, much to the inconvenience, suffering and hardship being endured by persons who keep visiting the institution to do “extraction” on a daily basis.But this information was not being provided to those affected, as they kept converging and crying out for excruciating pain in what was described as an overbearing and unacceptable situation which entailed just waiting in vain all the time.

In the public domain, people raised concerns of being treated like fools and being pushed around, because of the advice given them to “come back tomorrow”; only to add insult to injury in the unbearable condition, and to again be misled by the authorities, who knew fully well that receipt of the impending supplies remained uncertain and better needed to be done.

People also bemoaned the unnecessary punishment meted out to them, with nothing being done for them, like their being provided with some form of treatment, like painkillers, to bring relief to their predicament. This waiting continued for as long as four consecutive days, with people’s frustration and stress mounting all the time.

From their opinion, the interest of the public was involved here, and there was no need to keep it secret when it was necessary that the true position be made known to them in order for them to understand what really was causing the problem.

Some of them with financial means decided to travel to the city to have their extractions done, but what happened to the impecunious ones?
Enquiries made by me revealed that the hospital is faced with a shortage of dental injections; and instead of hiding it, this should have been made known to people, so they could have avoided the wastage of time and money travelling to the institution from all parts of Region Two. No timeframe was given as to when supplies would be replenished.

While the reason given was well accepted and disseminated, the main concern being expressed now is for the Ministry of Public Health to expedite delivery of the needed supplies of dental injections for the service to be restored to normalcy, the sooner the better.

“Who feels it knows it”, and the painful conditions emerging from toothache should never be underestimated, with the only remedy, in my opinion, being extraction.

Baliram Persaud