EDITOR, The Tribune.

I read your editorial on PMH with great interest.

ON several instances you referred to the lack of funding and the need to adequately fund healthcare, but several important questions must be asked. If Dr Glen Beneby’s assessment of $100 million of the healthcare budget is being wasted annually is true, then the question that must be asked is who is benefiting from the waste? Why haven’t corrections been made annually to reduce the magnitude of the waste? That money is going somewhere, where is it going? It seems then that there isn’t a problem with scarcity of funds, but rather “wasting” of funds. How do you waste $100 million a year and nobody tries to fix it?

Why do we have persons who have been in the system for years that are incapable of getting the problems at PMH under control? This is at the heart of the issue, seemingly incompetent people in decision making positions making poor decisions. For instance, overcrowding in A&E could be addressed by firmly and consistently directing people who have not been in accidents, are not medical emergencies to their community clinics. That is why they exist. This suggestion requires re-educating the public, but otherwise costs no money to implement!

According to your article, Dr Duane Sands states “for decades we have suffered from an inability to properly budget and allocate sufficient finances for medicine, medical and surgical supplies equipment, staff and infrastructure upgrade and maintenance.”

Really? We have educated, highly trained individuals in positions solely to perform that function who do not fulfil their job descriptions by budgeting and allocating financial resources, but are still employed for decades? This means that over the course of one decade $1billion dollars has been budgeted and wasted on healthcare. Again I ask, who is profiting from this organised chaos?

The neglect that is evidenced by broken chairs, non-functioning equipment and duct tape is not because of scarcity of resources, apparently, but possibly misdirection of resources. One can only wonder if the apparent incompetence is actually intentional. One can only wonder!

JB

Nassau,

January 30, 2018.