Woeful bureaucracy

BUREAUCRACY, it seems, is really killing us.

A piece of expensive and greatly needed equipment is donated to the San Fernando General Hospital, but it is still not in use a year after it was delivered. The once efficient Emergency Health Services is now a badly ailing unit because only eight of its 46 ambulances are in operation; the other vehicles are laid up for want of repairs. A quantity of important drugs donated to TT by FEEL was only cleared by the Customs Department after an appeal was made to the Minister of Health. What is happening here? Do the people in charge of these matters really care?

The $9 million lithrotripper, a machine used for shattering gallstones, has been lying idle in a container on the grounds of the San Fernando Hospital since last year with apparently no serious effort made by the SWRHA to have it in operation. The relief of pain and suffering this machine could bring is enormous; it can be measured in the fact that some 300 persons afflicted with gallstone problems are seen at the hospital every year and, because there is no lithrotripper to treat them, they must wait at least two years before they can receive remedial surgery.

The problem with this machine, it seems, was purely technical and easily solvable. According to Clive Pantin, CEO of FEEL, donors of the lithrotripper, the SWRHA was informed that an expert from the US was available to commission the machine "and all he wanted was that he and his wife would be put up" during his visit. Pantin said he had witten several letters to the Authority and had even spoken to Health Minister Colm Imbert about the gallstone machine but all to no avail. As a consequence of this official indifference, it is only natural for the board of FEEL to become distrustful about arranging for equipment from abroad to be donated to the SWRHA.

The attitude of the Authority's bureaucracy to this valuable and useful gift is unbelievable. Instead of welcoming the donation and cooperating fully and actively with FEEL to have it in operation, the SWRHA apparently chose to ignore the caring gesture. The emasculation of the once effective EHS ambulance service seems the result of another bureaucratic failure. There appears to be no other explanation for the almost total breakdown of maintenance of the ambulance vehicles, 38 of them becoming inoperative over a period of time. There is no need to emphasize the importance of such a service, since its prompt response in cases of accidents, heart attacks, sudden breakdowns or other emergencies could mean the difference between life and death.

Only recently there have been complaints from persons who claim that their desperate call for an ambulance went unheeded. Relavives of Reynold Ramnath said they waited in vain, more than two hours, for an ambulance when the Malgretoute gardener was pinned under his tractor which had overturned. Eventually, an off-duty fire officer who lives in the area, got a Fire Services ambulance to respond. Ramnath was pronounced dead on arrival at the San Fernando General Hospital. When musician Andre Tanker was stricken with a heart attack two weeks ago at his Maraval home, his relatives dialled the 999 emergency number but, to their dismay, they were informed that there was no ambulance operating in that area. Even at the risk of asking him to "micro-manage" we would appeal to Health Minister Imbert to review the operations of the country's ambulance service to ensure its good order and to ensure that bureaucracy does not kill us.