(Excerpts of Dr. the Honourable Godwin Friday\u2019s 2023 Budget Presentation)
\nI heard the minister talked about a health care revolution. You can\u2019t be serious. The horror
\nstories are familiar to most of us. Madam Speaker, health is one of the closest things to you. You
\nhave to try and improve as time goes on. We don\u2019t have to accept that bad health care is just the
\nway things are in St. Vincent and Grenadines. When you get sick you go somewhere else. We
\ndeserve better
\nThe minister will say that we have invested in the budget. This estimates $110 million, directly
\nin the health services. A hundred million in recurrent expenditures and $9.4 million for capital
\nexpenditure. Yet, there is chronic shortage of basic medicine for common diseases. Bandages
\nand supplies are often not available and I know this from people who are there or have been there
\nrecently. Therefore, leaving family members to search all over Kingstown to try to find a
\npharmacy that has the medication. We have had a scarcity or a lack of critical diagnostic
\nequipment. But, the minister said, and I\u2019m happy to hear, that an MRI machine and CT scan are
\ncoming to help with that problem. The question is, of course, to make sure that they function,
\nyou have the technicians, and they work, because we had a CT scan here too and sometimes you
\ngo there and it isn\u2019t working.
\nSo, we have to make sure we take care of those problems. You can\u2019t have Madam Speaker, a
\nperson coming from North Leeward or the Southern Grenadines to go and get a procedure, and
\nwhen you get to the hospital, you are told, \u201cWell sorry, the machine is down.\u201d or, \u201cthe technician
\ndidn\u2019t come in today,\u201d That is unconscionable. I see that there is the patient bill of rights in the
\nhospital, that means nothing if the people who are administering the institution don\u2019t take it to
\nheart themselves. The patients could read it and grumble, and who do they complain to? You
\nhave an ombudsman to your parliamentary representative who\u2019s in the opposition. We have to do
\nbetter than that.
\nMadam Speaker, very often for persons who need to have surgery or diagnostic intervention,
\ncurrently have to go overseas. A friend of mine went to Grenada for MRI. Some people go to
\nBarbados or to Trinidad, or if you have to undergo surgery still, they do. The delays can cause a
\nlot of pain and anxiety for people. We understand that the complex surgeries, brain surgery, heart
\nsurgery, organ transplants or serious technical advanced kind of surgeries, that you have to still
\ngo abroad. We\u2019ll never be able to do those things here, because we just don\u2019t have the numbers
\nto justify that. But, we should put facilities in place to make sure we can get access to them. We
\nmust improve, Madam Speaker, the question is, how do people find the money to pay for these
\nservices? The suggestion was that there was going to be perhaps user fees.
\nBut, currently what happens is that somebody gets sick, and you get treatment with us here or
\noverseas. People have to go and they beg their MP, they come to my office or some of the
\nmembers on this side and members on my team, they are very generous and try to help people as
\nbest they can with their limited resources. I would hope the members on the other side do
\nlikewise. But similarly, Madam Speaker, they go to businesses, they get charities or they have
\nfood sale, barbecue sale, to try and raise funds to go and get treatment. And, you may do that the<\/p>\n
first time, but what happens if you have to go back? You have to go through the process again.
\nThat is not acceptable.
\nMadam Speaker, it\u2019s very hard to hear someone who comes for assistance, because they need a
\ndiagnosis, and they have a life-threatening illness or they need to get intervention, whether it\u2019s
\nsurgery or some of the treatment, and they have to go overseas; Barbados, Trinidad, maybe even
\nCuba before the analysis and treatment. And, you ask them, \u201cWell, when are you going?\u201d And
\nthey replied, they don\u2019t know because they have to raise the money to go. This comes in dribs
\nand drabs, a little contribution here and there. People go around with sponsor sheets trying to
\nraise funds. That\u2019s unacceptable. The number of such cases might be statistically not large, but
\nthey\u2019re significant.
\nIn any event, Madam Speaker, health care is not a numbers game. It\u2019s not a numbers game.
\nEvery single life is precious and matters, especially to the owner of it, and to their family
\nmembers. So, we need to do better. Let\u2019s see, the functioning of the CT scan and the MRI that
\nthe minister spoke of, how that will work out. And again, the question that I ask is that not just
\nhaving the machine but having the maintenance, having the technical people, the staff, to make
\nsure it functions the way it\u2019s supposed to.
\nYou will note that the NDP in the campaign, we talked about building a modern purpose hospital
\nto serve our people, and they ridiculed it, Madam Speaker. They find a picture somewhere on the
\ninternet and they say, \u201cOh, this is Farmville. The people of St Vincent and the Grenadines don\u2019t
\ndeserve this.\u201d Then it took them a little while to come up with their own idea. They say, \u201cWell,
\nlisten, this is something. The NDP may have had a good plan there, but let me come up with
\nsomething else. We\u2019ll call it not a hospital, an acute referral hospital.\u201d Call it something
\ndifferent, it\u2019s part of a bigger plan. But, we understand and the people understand that this is
\nwhat we proposed, because we know that people of this country deserve better health care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Excerpts of Dr. the Honourable Godwin Friday\u2019s 2023 Budget Presentation) I heard the minister talked about a health care revolution. You can\u2019t be serious. The horror stories are familiar to most of us. Madam Speaker, health is one of the closest things to you. You have to try and improve as time goes on. We<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[257,9,247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ndp-view","category-opinion","category-political-views"],"yoast_head":"\n