At This Pace Jamaicans Will Be Running Away To Haiti Soon

Eighteen (18) infants have died between June and September this year from health­care-asso­ci­at­ed infec­tions at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) in Kingston and Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay accord­ing to the Jamaican media.

No one knows more about the unbear­able grief which comes from los­ing one’s child than this writer . The immea­sur­able grief is so much that many com­mit sui­cide, oth­ers are ruined emo­tion­al­ly for life and oth­ers sim­ply quit after their child has died.
It is against that back­drop that this medi­um wish­es to asso­ciate with the pain and suf­fer­ing of those par­ents as they grieve this loss and suf­fer a pain that cuts to the core.

In most soci­eties the per­son who heads the health sec­tor would resign as a mark of respect for those par­ents and for not fig­ur­ing out that some­thing was amiss.
There has been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of calls for the Minister of health Fenton Ferguson to step aside in light of these deaths which clear­ly could have been avoided.
He has stead­fast­ly refused to step aside claim­ing he could not have fixed a prob­lem of which he was unaware.
This is not the first time that Ferguson a Dentist by trade has come under scruti­ny and for his lack of aware­ness of what ails the nation’s health care deliv­ery system.
Many of his crit­ics did so against the chick v out­break which plagued the Island just months ago. Some argue that the fact that he is a den­tist and not a med­ical doc­tor has some­thing to do with what they char­ac­ter­ize as his incompetence.
I dis­agree that one has to be a med­ical doc­tor in order to be a good min­is­ter of health which is an admin­is­tra­tive job.
Ferguson has at his dis­pos­al a vast cadre of com­pe­tent med­ical doc­tors with whom he can consult.

In fact we under­stand that a recent audit was done of the health ser­vices and Ferguson hid the results from the country.
Additionally it has been report­ed that a promi­nent young Doctor Alfred Dawes who head­ed the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA) has been black­list­ed by the Portia Simpson Miller Government because he spoke out about the con­di­tions in the health sec­tor on the Island.
The Medical Doctors Association report­ed their experiences .

“We have flies in the oper­at­ing the­atre. We have to reuse sin­gle-use instru­ments that aren’t dis­posed of but [are] washed and placed in antibac­te­r­i­al solu­tion and used on anoth­er patient,”. Pads and pen­cils used with elec­tro­sur­gi­cal machines, which sends elec­tri­cal cur­rent to blood ves­sels to stop bleed­ing, are also reused. “The pen­cils are soaked in dis­in­fec­tant and reused till they stop work­ing,” the doc­tor said. However, he point­ed out that the reused pen­cils run the risk of burn­ing the patient and caus­ing elec­tri­cal fires. Another doc­tor said they often prac­tise what they term ‘social­ist med­i­cine’ as left­overs from an indi­vid­u­al’s surgery are used on some­one else. “We have a mesh that is used to fix her­nias. We ask patients to buy them as the hos­pi­tal always runs out. When we don’t use all of the ster­ile mesh in the surgery for the patient who bought it, we soak it in dis­in­fec­tant and use the left­over on a patient who could­n’t afford to buy their own,” According to the Jamaicaobserver​.com.

The Prime Minister thus far has been nowhere in sight, in fact the only time she is heard from these days is when she shows up to cozy up to Foreign lead­ers, latch on to the suc­cess­es of sports stars, or curse out the Opposition. In her absence the People’s National Party’s Youth Organization the “Comrade farm” or “D league” of the Governing admin­is­tra­tion has stepped to the fore attempt­ing to address the issue of the deaths of the infants.

PNPYO ACCUSES JLP OF POLITICISING HEALTH CARE

The Opposition “must imme­di­ate­ly remove their favourite polit­i­cal­ly coloured lens­es and call a spade a spade”. Kledsiella is well known as one of the most com­mon hos­pi­tal bugs, caus­ing pos­si­ble fatal ill­ness­es world­wide. “Kledsiella’s spread among neonates does not aver­age above six per cent in Jamaica, includ­ing the deaths this year, and while sta­tis­tics will not bring back the lives of some of our youngest Jamaicans, we still fare bet­ter than some more eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful coun­tries, such as Brazil with a 50 per cent affect­ed rate of its neonates”

In oth­er words as the Party leader usu­al­ly say to those who oppose her igno­rant non­sense, “Shut up”.
It could have been much worse.
If ever there was any doubt where Jamaica is head­ing under the stew­ard­ship of the present Administration and its sub­sidiaries there need be no fur­ther questions.
The met­ric used in Jamaica is the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, as such our coun­try does not mea­sure itself against the suc­cess of oth­ers we rate our­selves against the fail­ure lev­els of others.
Notwithstanding this glar­ing lack of vision, wis­dom and car­ing, hun­dreds of Thousands of Jamaicans will dress up in orange col­ored cos­tumes like “junkanoo” per­form­ers and they will jubi­lant­ly march into polling sta­tions come next nation­al elec­tions. Some may go even fur­ther, they will wound and even kill those who have oppos­ing polit­i­cal views.
In fair­ness the oth­er side will do the very same.
In the end the slow yet steady slide below the pover­ty line will con­tin­ue. Soon Jamaicans will be run­ning away to Haiti. They sim­ply do not know they deserve better.