END IN SIGHT

THE end to the lingering crisis in the nation’s hospitals might well be in sight and not because of any sudden return to robust health by “sick” doctors who have repeatedly declined to put patients first. The improvement in health care might very well come with Government’s decision to hire on contract 100 United Nations volunteer doctors, in addition to the recent contracting of Cuban doctors and nurses to fill vacancies at public health institutions.

Of special importance is that the foreign doctors are in specialised fields, and as a result will be in a better position to attend to the increasing number of challenging medical cases than had they simply been general practitioners. In turn, their filling of the critical vacancies will mean that the normal long wait of taxpayers seeking medical assistance at the nation’s public hospitals will be considerably reduced. This will mean, as well, an easing of the mental stress that patients who seek to access care at the hospitals have had to endure through long waits, even in normal times. Not without interest is that the specialist doctors will receive, in the majority of cases, stipends equal to those received by local doctors while yet others are contracted to get stipends somewhat lower than existing norms.

Government of course would be seen as trying to undermine the ongoing industrial relations negotiating process with doctors. Indeed, any payment of stipends to the foreign doctors in excess of that received by existing staff would have sent wholly uncomfortable signals. The fact of the matter, however, is that many of our doctors appear to have their own agenda and while we try to figure out what that is and give in to their demands, the people suffer, particularly those who depend for health and indeed life itself on public health care. Despite the arrangements already made by Government with respect to the filling of vacancies, it should, however, not be content until all of the approximately 200 vacancies for doctors in the public health service are taken care of. The filling of all of the vacancies for doctors will encourage citizens, who because of incomes and financial commitments, are hard pressed to seek private health care as an alternative, to go to public hospitals funded by their personal income taxes and payments of health surcharge.

Government cannot stop at the filling of vacancies to ease the present vexing ills of barely existing medical attention at the nation’s public hospitals, as a result of the sickout by many doctors, but should return to the Industrial Court to have the action ended. The industrial relations tactic of calling in sick, adopted by a high proportion of junior and other doctors at State hospitals, continues to affect the health and well being of a wide cross section of the community. To advance or even to contemplate that it is designed to bring Government to heel must be regarded as the sickest joke of the still young century. If Government is regarded as the target, then the industrial relations arrows are not only falling wide of their mark, but as was to be expected, hitting only lower income and lower middle income taxpayers.

The argument has been advanced that the Government should not have sought to contract Cuban doctors, and the insinuation made that their training was not of a high standard. This is unfortunate, as their training and treatment for medical complaints are highly regarded internationally. Or is it that those who advanced the argument would have preferred that ailing taxpayers suffer in silence. The Government is right to do its best to arrange to have the 100 plus foreign doctors come to help man the wards of our public hospitals.