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Friday, July 4, 2025

Wonderland

by

605 days ago
20231107
Dr David Bratt

Dr David Bratt

We live in a won­drous land, an Al­ice in the Won­der­land. Where things that seem to be, are not; things that should be, nev­er are and things that should nev­er be, are.

Take the sub­ject of health for in­stance. Is there any­one in this coun­try who be­lieves that Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans are re­ceiv­ing an ad­e­quate lev­el of health­care? Crit­i­cism seems to have qui­et­ed down for a time be­cause of the won­der­ful­ly suc­cess­ful pub­lic re­la­tions cam­paign that the Min­is­ter of Health en­gaged in dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, one that seems to have left lots of peo­ple fooled.

We have for­got­ten the mis­takes made: the pro­longed lock­down; the six-foot rule; the tem­per­a­ture tak­ing; wash­ing hands; masks out­doors; even the at­tempts to make the COVID vac­cine manda­to­ry for work and at one point for chil­dren to go to school.

In those days, you could hard­ly open the news­pa­pers or turn on the TV with­out see­ing mar­vel­lous pho­tos of the min­is­ter talk­ing about “fol­low­ing the sci­ence” or shak­ing hands with this per­son and that per­son, all of whom it seems he had per­son­al­ly helped. Is this what a Min­is­ter of Health is sup­posed to do? I would have thought that his time would be bet­ter spent fix­ing the sys­tems that are sup­posed to be in place to help pa­tients, rather than func­tion as a sort of su­per so­cial work­er?

If we for­get all this, if we do not dis­cuss those mis­takes, we might re­peat them in the next epi­dem­ic.

Then you have the health charts demon­strat­ing that so many op­er­a­tions took place and so many x-rays were done last year, all pur­port­ing to show that the Min­istry of Health is work­ing well. But isn’t that what it’s sup­posed to be do­ing? What’s so great about hav­ing surgery done? Hasn’t it al­ways been done? Where were the charts and sta­tis­tics dur­ing the years when del­i­cate and com­pli­cat­ed surgery was be­ing done at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al and oth­er hos­pi­tals by men like GOD Bus­by, A But­ler and U Man­mo­hans­ingh, to name on­ly a few. Where was the min­istry when doc­tors like N Jankie, W Charles and H Mac­Far­lane worked un­til mid­night and on week­ends so that peo­ple could get their lab re­sults on time? Who cared that pae­di­a­tri­cians R Ramkissoon, H Mac­Dow­ell, I Mo­hammed and R Cox were on call every oth­er day on the pae­di­atric wards, from 1960 to 1976, and nev­er took va­ca­tion?

The Min­istry of Health nev­er had to pub­lish ad­ver­tise­ments in the news­pa­per demon­strat­ing what it was do­ing. You did your work to the best of your abil­i­ty and the on­ly thanks you got was the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of your pa­tients and the re­spect of your fel­low pro­fes­sion­als. Now all that seems a dis­tant mem­o­ry and at times, it ap­pears that the ad­min­is­tra­tors in the Min­istry of Health build­ings are the ones mak­ing the di­ag­noses, do­ing the op­er­a­tions and in­ter­pret­ing the lab tests.

In the mean­time, med­ical sys­tems run down, doc­tors and nurs­es em­i­grate, Panadol is not avail­able in the health cen­tres and TV is full of peo­ple beg­ging the min­is­ter to help them out. The so­lu­tion seems to be to bring in for­eign doc­tors from coun­tries, some of which are med­ical­ly worse off than us. Some doc­tors come here for a ten days work, do op­er­a­tions that lo­cal sur­geons usu­al­ly do but can­not, be­cause they are re­fused op­er­at­ing the­atre time by in­com­pe­tent ad­min­is­tra­tors. Guess whose op­er­at­ing the­atres they use?

We con­tin­ue to have the be­wil­der­ing sit­u­a­tion of our Prime Min­is­ters fly­ing away for med­ical check-ups every cou­ple of years. Why? Do they not trust the med­ical care in their coun­try? Some years ago, a PM left to have car­diac surgery say­ing he did not want to have his surgery done lo­cal­ly be­cause the sur­geon in­volved was a UNC ac­tivist. This gen­er­at­ed enor­mous ex­cite­ment on the talk shows, with ac­cu­sa­tions fly­ing left, right and cen­tre. This lev­el of mau­vais langue con­tin­ues to this day. Who is a “PNM doc­tor” and who is a “UNC doc­tor”! Who is a “PNM pa­tient” and who is a “UNC pa­tient”!

Top­ics like the state of can­cer treat­ment in the coun­try; the ef­fect of the COVID lock­down on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, fam­i­ly and chil­dren’s health; ram­pant phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and sex­u­al abuse in pub­lic; traf­fic pol­lu­tion; men­tal health; the present out­break of chick­en­pox; de­crease in vac­ci­na­tions of chil­dren; mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dents; new hos­pi­tals with­out staff or spe­cial­ists; the 100,000 chil­dren who need treat­ment for their dis­abil­i­ties.

These do not seem to be im­por­tant. What is im­por­tant is that, to keep up with pub­lic opin­ion, doc­tors must now seem­ing­ly ask their pa­tients their pol­i­tics. Soon, we will be hav­ing po­lit­i­cal an­tibi­otics and po­lit­i­cal cough syrup. We al­ready have plen­ty po­lit­i­cal gas­tro.


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