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.