Dear Editor,
I REFER to a letter carried on the letter page of the Guyana Chronicle dated Wednesday, September 21 and captioned: “Contradicting Region Five RHO by personal experience.”This letter was submitted by Mr Harry Gill MP (PPP/C). In his letter, Mr Gill saw it fit to make several sweeping generalisations 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 emotions and conjecture with the whimsical hope of fooling the naïve and the gullible.
Mr Gill’s letter is a glaring example of the depths to which these opposition politicians are willing to sink in the hope of scoring some points against the Government. 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 wish to draw the attention of the public to a recent, highly successful health-care exercise held in the region on Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th September 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 2,000 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 of the 2,000-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 MP Gill that there is a shortage of essential drugs in Region Five, where did the drugs to provide relief to 2,000-odd people over a period of two days, come from? From out of thin air?
Mr Gill’s writing 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 in point of a politician callously twisting the facts to support his theory. These face masks, also known as nebulizers, are sterilised 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, 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 sterilisation after use.
Mr Gill has been in the habit of trying to bully the staff of Fort Wellington Hospital, using his credentials as a Member of Parliament. He once got upset when he wanted to sit in a restricted area of the said Hospital and was told by staff that he could not do so. He once demanded of senior staff of the hospital that they provide him with a list of the drugs available at the hospital and he took umbrage when he was told that he had no authority to make such demands.
In his letter to the Chronicle, 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 specialise in the use of equipment. One nurse is assigned to take blood pressure, another assigned to giving the injection, another nurse assigned to the dressing of injuries and another to using the thermometer to take temperatures and so 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 MP 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 cat 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 of why patients from 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 are finished diagnosing patients, if they are residents of Region Five, they don’t give them medication, they send them back to Region Five to collect medication. I am advised that on some days staff at the 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. Mr 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 verified and independently verifiable facts. Then to arrogantly assume that readers are fools.

OVID MORRISON
REO Region Five