Letters & Opinion

The Deteriorating Health System in Saint Lucia

MS EDITOR, have you noticed that health care in Saint Lucia has become a ticket to either Lazarus, Rambally or Crick’s funeral home? Do you know Ms Editor, that when patients go to either St Jude or Victoria Hospital, they have to wait extensive hours to obtain medical attention? Are you aware that patients are greeted by dawn when they are to be admitted to St Jude Hospital? In addition to that, it has been almost a decade that our St Jude hospital has been inactive since that fire in 2009. Ms Editor, you know what really makes me mad? It is that it seems the government is not looking into a better health care system, to offer the people of my country!

Ms Editor, it appears that the medical equipment at the various hospitals are useless! My deceased father was subjected to this incompetent health care system, when admitted at Saint Jude Hospital, in early 2017. He was placed on an oxygen tank and complained for three days because the tank provided no oxygen. As if that was not enough Ms Editor, on another attempt, the oxygen ran out and my father struggled to stay alive while nurses were present on that ward. Have our lives become so insignificant? Ms Editor, it is therefore only a fair conclusion that St Jude is not a hospital but a modern day gallows.

Legs are amputated for the smallest injury and some mothers don’t make it out of delivery. Do we really have a health care system Ms Editor or are we really disguising a morgue under the name of a hospital? Are these licensed professionals who perform surgeries or are these butchers slaughtering human meat? Ms Editor aren’t hospitals supposed to cure us? Why then has it become a horror house?

Lastly Ms Editor, it appears that keeping abreast with technology is more important than securing the lives of others. I could remember five years ago, the government supplied Form Three students with laptops. Why is the government spending such an exorbitant amount on gadgets when our hospitals do not have functioning dialysis machines? Why are we funding an international horse track and not rebuilding our very own hospital? It seems Ms Editor that vets are better equipped to care for our health!

We the people of Saint Lucia do not deserve to be treated like this. We are in dire need of a better health care system. I am tired of the extensive waiting hours, the incompetent doctors and the disregard for life. Ms Editor, I’ve had enough!

Alex B. James
(A terrified young person)

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