Mercenaries parading as doctors

THE EDITOR: I was so pleased with your editorial of Wednesday 6, that I felt compelled to write to congratulate you on such a wonderful piece. I understand that the goodly doctor is the chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Medical Board, and during the doctor’s sick-out he was quoted as saying that doctors were quite right to take sick leave and work in their private practices! Well, so much for ethics! Doctors are also now complaining about expenses incurred by Government for hotel accommodation for Cuban doctors. They seem to forget however, the tremendous expense which Government had to bear in placing patients at private health institutions during their sick-out action and from which most of them benefitted handsomely while still collecting their full salaries. These doctors believe that the majority of people in this country are too dumb to tell the wood from the trees and those who can are either of their ilk or could not be bothered. For myself, I find it very difficult to have any confidence in these doctors or any respect for their Board. They are now a very frustrated lot and the Cubans should be warned that they are not to be trusted.

I recently saw a letter written by Dr E Chamely in which he accused the Minister of Health of acting autocratically in introducing legislation to facilitate the temporary registration of doctors. Now, Dr Chamely is a very prominent physician in San Fernando and is well known for his community work. He has been in the forefront of many charitable efforts and was also at one time an Independent Senator. He may also have been the recipient of a National Award and if not, I would think it is a serious omission on the part of those responsible. I am saying all this because I believe that this doctor’s opinion carries a lot of weight and I hold him in the highest esteem. But where, pray tell, was this goodly doctor when doctors took sick-out action and patients languished on hospital benches for hours that turned into days? Some people even died! Could be that I missed it and the gentleman did indeed take a public position in support of the poor and suffering patients; in which case I would unhesitatingly apologise. But these are the circumstances in which evil flourish; when good men do nothing. If I am to summarise this doctor’s position on the action taken by the Minister it would be that maintaining the status quo is more important than the ethics of the profession.

A certain well known politician, during his tenure as Prime Minister said that teachers who abandoned the children in their classrooms to pursue industrial action were ‘criminals’. In like manner I would think that doctors who abandoned their patients in the hospitals and other public health facilities are “m ..... ers.” (I would leave the population at large to fill in the blanks). Astonishingly however, this politician found it possible to support the doctors during their sick-out. During the dark days of World War II, the late great Sir Winston Churchill quoted this line from poet Claude Macay: “If we must die let us nobly die”. To this I would like to add that if die we must, we would rather die at the hands of well meaning quacks than at the hands of those ruthless mercenaries parading as doctors. I urge the population to rally on the side of the minister for taking action in defense of the poor and humble in our society. I say, right on Mr Imbert, next step a National Health Insurance Scheme.

RAY RAMDEEN
San Fernando