Dear Editor,
I HAVE been desperately trying to ignore Dr. Leslie Ramsammy’s multiple letters to the local media. Today, I’ve just about read enough.

Dr. Leslie Ramsammy was once Minister of Health under the PPP administration’s 23-year rule. I do not know Dr. Ramsammy personally, but I have had a few engagements with him since he taught me in medical school. I would admit that he was an exemplary lecturer. But my writing today is not to critique or compliment him for his teaching style. My writing today is to express my frustration with Dr. Ramsammy as Minister of Health and his desperate attempts at scoring cheap political points.

His many writings are highlighting a healthcare system in serious crisis; I’ll give him credit for that. He is right on that, but this crisis did not develop today or after May 2015 as he and his like-minded cohorts would want us to believe. They were happening under him. He was silent then as Dr. Ramroop benefited from a multi-billion dollar drug-importation contract for which he had the monopoly; and it was alleged that this was so since he was best of mates with Mr. Jagdeo.

Where was Dr. Ramsammy when patients were needlessly dying at GPHC? Where was Dr. Ramsammy when neonates were dying in the NICU? Where was Dr. Ramsammy when patients were complaining, until their teeth fell out, about poor care in the cramped Accident and Emergency Unit? Where was Dr. Ramsammy when drugs were short and poor patients had to buy their own drugs? Where was Dr. Ramsammy when poor patients were being fleeced of $ US6000 for a heart test they did not need?

The minimum wage in Guyana was recently increased to $US3800 per year. How can patients find $US6000? Where was Dr. Ramsammy when patients were paying $100,000 per week for life-saving dialysis? A well known Guyanese gynaecologist, who recently died, could not afford that amount and had to relocate to Trinidad with his daughter, much less the poor minimum wage patients. Where was Dr. Ramsammy when poor patients were being verbally abused by doctors and nurses and on many occasions needlessly dying? And I can go on. Where were you Dr. Ramsammy?

I know where Dr. Ramsammy was. He was in America getting first-class medical care while poor Guyanese patients were suffering and dying in the local healthcare hospitals I characterised as death chambers. Who can forget when Mr. Jagdeo chartered a plane to rush him to America when he had a little diarrhoea. Frankly, I would tell most of my patients with diarrhoea to “man up”, it will ease on its own. Apparently that was beyond Mr. Jagdeo.

I will repeat, the healthcare system in Guyana has serious problems. These problems are not new. The present government needs to take these problems seriously. As I have written on multiple occasions, the Ministry of Public Health should focus on the basics. Forget about complicated cardiac stents and kidney transplants. What sense would it make inserting a complicated and expensive cardiac stent when you lack the basic medication such as ticagrelor and aspirin to keep the stent from blocking? What’s the sense of doing a kidney transplant when you lack basic transplant medications and monitoring of these transplant medications? The fact is that the transplant would be rejected.

Editor, it would appear that Dr. Ramsammy has just awoken from his narcolepsy or has selective mutism. I would suggest he get his mates to brief him on what transpired during the PPP’s 23-year reign. I would also humbly suggest that he join Mr. Jagdeo in the naughty corner while they both recite the alphabet. Leave criticisms to those who are not tainted by the past and trying to score cheap politician points.

Regards
Dr. Mark Devonish MBBS MSc MRCP(UK) FRCP(Edin)
Consultant Acute Medicine
Nottingham University Hospital