As a born St. Lucian but with two US national parents, I have spent my whole life in St. Lucia but have always had an option of travelling to the US for medical treatment. Having had horrific experiences both at Victoria and Tapion Hospitals, my parents determined years ago that any medical procedure or treatment would be best administered abroad. And how lucky I am to have that option. My first experience at Victoria was when I was 15 and a glass bottle cut open my achilles tendon and was only attended to after we waited in casualty for over four hours, all the while blood was oozing out of my body and I was crying out in agony as pieces of glass were still in the wound. I am still unsure whether the person who attended to me was an actual doctor because we were never introduced and when the wound had to be reopened and retreated in the US 6 months later, my doctor in the US asked me whether it was a butcher or a doctor who had treated me and suggested that over time the untreated damage done to the tendon would have eventually resulted in my being unable to put pressure on the foot. i.e., I would have been unable to walk.
An experience at Tapion years later, where I had to stay for at least two and a half weeks after an accident, resulted in my parents having to sell one of their vehicles in order to pay the exorbitant bill. So I have never known a time in my country when healthcare system was satisfactory and affordable. Doctors here do not encourage second opinions, too many people have died or been misdiagnosed without recourse, lawyers are afraid to sue doctors for malpractice and in the past ten to fifteen years, the lack of attention to healthcare has reached crisis point where we are virtually, in my opinion, at the point of collapse.
I never once heard the labour party on the campaign trail explain why they couldn’t finish St. Jude Hospital (aka the Stadium) for the appalling conditions that they kept them in for the entire time they housed them in the so-called “temporary facility”. The only person to present an actual plan to this country, who has a vision to fix what is broken, is Allen Chastanet. He has pledged to take his time on this issue but has promised to provide a world class healthcare system backed up by national medical insurance plan. If this works, it will be revolutionary. I do not know if it would work, but I know we have to try. And I applaud him for trying because this is not an easy task. However, our people do deserve better. I am glad PM Chastanet is not rushing to make quick decisions on this –St. Jude is the result of a rushed and poorly thought of plan. We cannot afford to repeat. But the fact is what passes for healthcare on this island and what has always passed for healthcare on this island is pathetic.
Most of the doctors struggle to make do and many, in my view, deserve medals for working under those conditions. However, I do not recall any of the doctors, who have all of a sudden found their conscience, some of whom were “working behind the scenes” on the St. Jude debacle, ever coming out with a demand after five years of construction by the Labour Party, that the hospital be delivered. I have never heard of them offering free clinics or better yet, public pronouncements and advice on how to help the Government deliver on better healthcare for the people of St. Lucia. But today, they have found voices and are experts on construction. Such experts-that in all the hard work behind the scenes, they could not advise the last Government that the operating theatre should not have drywall partitions amongst other egregious mistakes made there. And whilst some doctors with an overnight conscience may want to use the opportunity to try to score cheap political points, the fact remains that we all deserve better and if these doctors had in fact taken a genuine interest in national healthcare before the issue became political – and before they panicked that the national insurance plan might affect the way and amount that they charge patients, we might have had at least a semblance of a working healthcare system years ago.
Alfaka