SAVE THIS WOMAN!

Jul 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

We may never know how much it cost the country to host this year’s CARICOM Heads of Government meeting. What is certain though is who is paying. Guess who is paying? Yes, you and I.
While the dignitaries were making their way into the National Cultural Center, a woman and her husband stood outside of the National Cultural Center. She and her husband were pleading for her life.
Nailine Shivram is a poor woman. She has renal failure which means that her kidneys are not filtering her blood and therefore the toxins which are produced within are not being removed. If left unchecked, these toxins will eventually kill her.
She needs dialysis to take the naturally produced poisons out of her body. The cost of this treatment in Guyana is prohibitive. Guess why? Because the public health institutions which provide free health care do not offer dialysis.
This poor woman has had to seek such treatment from private sources and she has spent almost everything that she has. She says that she has no more money. It is evident that she is swelling and is likely to die soon unless she gets treatment.
I am sure that both she and her husband did not wish to be outside the National Cultural Center. I am sure they did not wish the limelight or to be caught up with a picket each. I am sure they do not wish to get involved in embarrassing the government. But what does a desperate woman do? Should she just sit there and surrender to her situation and wait to die? No, that would not be right. She or her husband cannot be faulted for taking their protest to the National Cultural Center. It was, probably, what she thought was her only recourse. It was the pleading of a desperate woman, knowing that without the money to do her dialysis she will die.
She should never have been confronted with this dilemma. The health sector in this country is so awash with money that it can afford to engage in selective tendering for billions of dollars in goods and services each year and even to pay for these goods and services up front. Whose money do you think is being used to pay for all of these things? Yes, you and I.
So why is it then that these public hospitals and clinics cannot in this the first decade of the 21st century, offer dialysis to poor citizens? I know that it is costly, but so too is the amount of taxes which you and I have to pay each year.
I have noted that the Minister of Health has been sounding off recently. I have seen him speak out over the close to one billion dollar profit that the Demerara Tobacco Company raked in last year. It will not cost a billion dollars to get the equipment to begin dialysis treatment for those of our citizens who cannot afford to pay for this service from the few private agencies that offer this service.
I am told that one doctor in Berbice has brought in three sets of equipment to do dialysis and it is being rumoured that this doctor is yet to receive permission to offer the service. I am asking the Minister of Health, who has been so vocal in the past weeks, to comment on this and explain the reason why he thinks that this doctor is being frustrated.
There is at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation something called the Caribbean Heart Institute. I am asking the Minister of Health to make public whether this is a public- private sector partnership and to name the persons who are the principals behind the Caribbean Heart Institute. I am asking this because if this is a partnership between the government and the private sector, then your money and my money is being used within this partnership and we are thus entitled to know who are the persons that the government is dealing with.
I am calling on the government, yes the same government which rushed to bail out those Guyanese children stranded in India recently, to come to the rescue of Nalinie Shivram. She does not deserve to die. Millions are going to be spent on feting all the visiting dignitaries. Guess who is paying for that. Yes, you and I.
Help save the life of this poor woman. She is a citizen of this country.

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SAVE THIS WOMAN!

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