GATE and Zika highlight Govt incompetence

The PNM had thirty uninterrupted years of administration after it first assumed power in 1956. The population was encouraged by its initial strategy of “five-year” development plans. In that regard, the Ministry of Health published its First National Health Plan - 1967 to 1976. That document carefully outlined the country’s burden of disease and hinted at the type of health manpower required for the realisation of the sane evolution of a national health system. At the time too, a human resource needs assessment was done for nursing personnel.

Notwithstanding these studies, nothing was done to achieve the goals outlined for both. Human resource development in health was left to personal choice in career path. There has never been a government programme of institutionally directed human resource development in health - either at the undergraduate or post-graduate level.

The present Minister of Education, just as has been done previously, rather than seize the opportunity to reshape the present GATE programme so as to render it relevant to the country’s manpower needs and use this as his criterion for making the programme cost-efficient, and consistent with a vision of national development, has instead used it to simply bring together a hodge-podge of unrelated and mismatched accounting measures that have as their end, a reduction of costs with no thought of outcomes or of achieving efficiency by matching developmental needs to the kind of human resource development that would serve these ends.

In hastily reorganising the programme he has increased the financial burden placed on the backs of fixed-income families and given relief to a rich minority.

His solution is one that is (tax) regressive and ultimately services the bottom line of commercial banks that would profit from an increase in loan requests for tuition. The dissonance contrived between education, and developmental needs is even more savage in the case of the post-graduate pursuits of more mature patriots.

Similar myopia is seen in the case of the spread of Zika. Expenditure cutbacks have resulted in a not unexpected increase in the aedes index. There are more mosquitoes than ever! Zika is on the rise, and the government’s thinking is focused on birth abnormalities.

How much thought has gone into the likely increase in the incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) - an autoimmune paralytic complication of ZIKA that can kill its victim? Jamaica has recorded a dramatic rise in its incidence and there has been a 200 percent increase in incidence locally. Zika requires symptomatic treatment with “panadol”. GBS requires individual months-long intensive care with long-term mechanical ventilation and the use of costly immune therapy if the patient is to survive paralysis. The cost of such care is prohibitively expensive and not anywhere near as available as it should be in this country should there be an outbreak of GBS! Steve Smith via e-mail