Free services, recurring ailments

Jul 30, 2009 Editorial

With teams of visiting medical practitioners currently here to provide much-appreciated free services, there is no doubt that, as has now become customary, their patients’ general complaints will include skin infections, dental caries, hypertension and diabetes. The doctors, like those before them, will also have to deal with a surprisingly high incidence of asthma among young children. The diabetic condition is likely to take centre stage when one considers that some 40 per cent of Guyanese are diabetics. This disease is hereditary, often passing from parent to grandchild.

What is alarming about diabetes is the care. Many people refuse to adhere to a strict diet that would lead to a lowering of the blood sugar. Many complain that they simply cannot afford the diet given the rising prices and the almost stagnant salaries. However, hypertension is another cause for worrying. The experts describe this as a lifestyle disease. Simply put, people create their own conditions for hypertension. They refuse to exercise, they overeat and become obese and above all, they too refuse to adhere to a diet. Today, these conditions are beginning to manifest themselves in very young children. The doctors have expressed shock because such things may be common in the developed world but they are not common in countries like Guyana where fresh fruit and vegetables abound.

This development may be traced to the decline in parenting skills. Parents simply yield to the urging and sometimes demands of their offspring to the extent that those who could afford simply make whatever the child asks for, available. Such demands invariably lead to the fast food outlets that have become increasingly common in this country. One would expect that people would ensure that their children develop healthy lifestyles since that would mean a greater capability to absorb things academic, and more important, keep the doctor at bay because medical treatment could be costly, too costly for some people.

Over time, people have been complaining about the paucity of funds; that their salaries cannot meet to cope with the bills and other expenses. Indeed, things have become more costly with the global rises in prices but Guyanese have long been known to compensate by producing those basic things for their domestic needs.
No longer does the modern parent cultivate crops in the yard to supplement both income and diet, the result being that every price rise hits the home hard. This is more so in the urban areas where the yards are concreted for the purpose of aesthetics rather than designed for commonsense.

What is worrying, too, is the incidence of skin infections. Some of these have been attributed to insanitary conditions, but then again, some could be related to diet. It is surprising that people, at the onset of a skin infection, refuse to seek medical attention, choosing instead some home made remedy. Had they consulted a doctor they would have recognised that sometimes an addition to some foods could reverse the conditions. Instead, they have chosen to await the arrival of foreign medical personnel who repeatedly express shock at the extent of these ailments.

Preventive medicine is worth a hundred cures and saves millions of dollars. For this reason the developing world concentrates on preventive medicine since the cost of training medical personnel is almost prohibitive, although a necessary expenditure.
And preventive medicine also eases the pressure on the medical institutions, leaving free for the most serious cases and in Guyana these days, the number of serious cases are all too numerous. There are the gunshot and stab wounds, injuries from motor vehicle accidents, and the gamut of injuries that are so avoidable.

But we in the wider society must be concerned. The image being presented is one of a people who are so backward that they cannot even keep themselves healthy.
Perhaps the time is ripe for the authorities to set up a unit within the Health Ministry – notwithstanding the recent setback that entity has suffered – to take basic health care to our communities, particularly those rural, where by every stretch of imagination, the people should be far healthier than their urban counterparts, if only because they have the wherewithal to acquire all the fresh fruits and vegetables for much less.

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Free services, recurring ailments

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