WITH today’s Caribbean headlines more about deaths and violence than what’s being done to ensure peace on earth and long life for the living, it’s understandable that none of the government’s critics want to take up my invitation to publicly discuss from whence cometh today’s unhealthy problems at the national OKEU Hospital.
In the face of blind opposition criticism and relentless pressure from the representatives of the local medical fraternity regarding what they consider an unhealthy state of affairs at OKEU today, I underlined that successive previous Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) administrations (especially since 1997) had taken steps to widen and upgrade national health services to ‘universal’ standards and levels – including Universal Health Care (UHC) and National Health Insurance.
Just a short stroll down Memory Lane allowed me to recall that the OKEU hospital’s loss of the biggest finger in its original hand-shaped plan was a major surgical error – a botched operation that permanently and negatively affected the future of what was planned to be a new multi-service national hospital.
The OKEU was meant to replace the over-aged Victoria Hospital with what was originally designed to be the EU’s biggest development project in the Caribbean’s health sector.
The unilateral severing of perhaps the most important block by the then Saint Lucia government naturally reduced the hospital to being born with four fingers and prevented it from fully serving the nation as handily as planned.
Worse, the OKEU opened with fewer available beds than at Victoria Hospital, which the then administration promised to upgrade to take up the slack.
Just ask Mr Google…
An image on Google Earth shows the current footprint of the OKEU Healthcare Facility, indicating the empty position of the missing two-storey ‘finger’, which would have represented approximately 15% of the gross floor area of 14,000 square meters (or 150,000 square feet).
In the final designs of 2004/05, the wing was to have provided for Obstetrics and Gynecology Services, Ante and Post-Natal Care, a Maternity Delivery Suite and a special Baby and Child Care Center.
At the time the double-sized wing was excised, the Health Ministry planners promised Victoria Hospital would have been “re-purposed” to provide all the above services – but none of that ever happened…
Today’s health headlines are that the latest Saint Lucia population survey has revealed cases of Diabetes and Dengue – and the Health Ministry urging preparedness for another possible global health pandemic, this time Mpox.
So, Diabetes is still alive in Saint Lucia…
I have always held, however, that the island lost a prime opportunity to seek and find curable help for this persistent national disease when it was designated ‘The World’s Diabetes Capital’.
Why? Because, instead of calling on the world to ‘Do Something’ to show Diabetes can be tackled effectively and with remarkable and affordable comparative ease in one of the smallest countries in the world, with a tiny population, we treated it like having been burdened with an unhealthy designation that hurt and badly-wounded our national pride.
Regime Change always yields changed plans for the better or replacing inherited national projects with nothing.
This administration, under this Prime Minister, has demonstrated it can bring the OKEU Hospital up-to-scratch.
It now needs to move bigger, better and faster on treating Diabetes as the national disease it is, with emphasis on showing it can be successfully tackled in ways and means the nation will see and feel.
This Labour-led all-inclusive administration can continue where previous ones left off on early plans for Universal Health Care (UHC), featuring: Hospital and Pharmaceutical Services, Overseas Care, Specialist Consultations and Emergency Care.
Same with National Health Insurance – another punctured political football crying to be patched – or replaced.
Indeed, as usual, this Prime Minister, who is the Minister for Finance and Economic Development is providing the prescribed medicines.
Last week, Prime Minister Pierre indicated his government is allocating $11 million to the Millennium Heights Medical Complex (MHMC) – comprising the OKEU, National Mental Wellness Center and Turning Point Rehabilitation Center — to help overcome the severe financial problems affecting the three public health entities.
This is not like placing a plaster on a ‘bobo’ (sore), but instead an initial instalment on a planned major national health financing project that will hopefully lead to a very long-term solution to the island’s current medical and health delivery problems.
The OKEU Hospital has been like a fathomless ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ for Asian investors based in the Cayman Islands, the Prime Minister understandably also says the Finance Ministry will demand accountability for the resources being made available.
Thankfully, however, never mind all the losses of the identified services, all is not lost forever – and the government should give serious thought to saving the day for tomorrow, by creating and surgically reconnecting OKEU’s extracted finger.
This Philip J. Pierre administration has demonstrated its capacity to complete unfinished projects it inherited — from the St. Jude Hospital to the Hewanorra International Airport (HIA), the Halls of Justice and a Northern Division police headquarters in Gros Islet and the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) has never had as much finances and resources from Central Government as during the past three years.
Halfway through its first term, this administration should therefore look to include ‘Completion of the OKEU Hospital’ as a goal for its second term, as it’ll likely take moving mountains to get the EU to OK such a plan after the costly and grievous bodily harm already done to it by a Government of Saint Lucia.
The EU was overwhelmingly proud of the original plan for a model modern hospital that would have been a good example for other OECS and CARICOM neighbours to follow – like how the Darren Sammy Cricket Ground was the first stadium built for the 2007 Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean (West Indies).
But the then Government also botched the OKEU operation (in the same 2007) – and the rest is not-necessarily-healthy history.