Free health care for all citizens

THE EDITOR: The experience of Mr Andre Tanker’s family as reported in your newspaper has led me to make the following comments and suggestions. I do not make bold to defend the action of personnel at St Clair Medical Centre, as I presume they shall, in the fullness of time, issue a statement to counter the apparent besmirching of their collective medical character. However, what is incontrovertible fact is that a private medical institution must ensure payment for services rendered so as to be able to meet the demands of repayment to those who supplied establishment financing and operating costs.

Magnanimity of spirit in caring for the ill without financial recompense is a seriously devalued currency in today’s world of the usurers who finance private medical institutions, and for as long as this situation obtains, it behooves us all to look for the alternative, ideal though it may be, of caring for the ill and not having to count the cost.

My suggestions are:
1) The artists/artistes of Trinidad and Tobago should let the circumstances of the St Clair incident motivate them to encourage (mad pressure) the present political administration to conceptualise, formulate and implement, within their first term, a plan for the efficient provision of the best available medical care in the island free of payment at point of service. Surely this is not beyond the abilities of the English speaking if not the Caribbean’s most creative people.
2) The artists/artistes should make their contribution to this system by setting up a foundation in Mr Tanker’s name.
This foundation would specifically aim to fund the improvement of emergency ambulance services and also correct the Emergency Medical Department at Port-of-Spain or other general hospitals.
Such action would ensure longevity of the memory of Andre Tanker outside the sphere of the performing arts. The equality of his music had already assured him eternal memory in that sphere.

DR JEFFREY MASSAY
Consultant/Cardiologist
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Barbados