In Guyana, humans die like flies

Sep 16, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It was reported on Wednesday last that a 74-year-old man went up to the airport with family members to receive visiting relatives. He was found dead. The surveillance cameras recorded his exit from the bus but his perambulations took him outside the scope of the cameras. His body was found in the area of the maintenance building.
There is no other country in the world where this man could have roamed the acreage of a national airport and would have reached the maintenance building without being intercepted. In all countries of the world, except the tenth rate mango republic that Guyana is, airports are strategic areas that are under heavy security surveillance – both manned and electronic. Airports are intricately connected with national security so there is a wide area of security coverage.
The only way that guy could have died without being detected, was if he had left the parking centre and went away in the direction of the public road. That would mean he left the totality of the airport estate. The totality of the airport estate has to have security simple because it is an airport. But the police release said that his body was found by the maintenance building.
The space between the parking centre and the maintenance building, no matter how vast, has to be covered by both cameras and guards. But this is Guyana; nothing is ever covered by commonsense, rationality and human thinking. People die like flies in this country. You want to see the journey from life to meaningless withering away of the body, then, visit the Georgetown Public Hospital; as a matter of fact, any public hospital in this God-forsaken wasteland.
A driver knocks down a traffic rank doing duties on the road in Eccles. The policeman was hospitalized at the Georgetown Public Hospital. He died one day after his release. Let’s do logical deduction. What could he have done to cause him to die one day after leaving the hospital? I don’t know why he died but I could do what all humans since time immemorial have been doing – offer an opinion. I believe the policeman was misdiagnosed. I believe there are poorly trained, incompetent doctors at public hospitals throughout this country and their limited knowledge has led to the unnecessary deaths of dozens of poorer folks.
People have become so psychically destroyed in this land that life for them is just like the lives of fishes in a stagnant, little gutter somewhere in a deserted area. I remember my cousin took in and was hooked up to a machine. His condition didn’t look good and that private hospital had just one doctor on call. I repeat for emphasis – just one doctor working and he was a UG intern manning the emergency room. My cousin did not see a doctor from the time he was hooked up that afternoon. He died around 9 pm without seeing a doctor. See my column of February, 25, 2015 for a description on the incident. It was clear to me that night that no one at that hospital could have been bothered.
This is what Guyana has become. The reason I find this banana republic frightening is that its inhabitants have no concept of what the human being is. I know what you are about to read in the next line may appear to be a wild exaggeration, but it is my opinion that this country has some of the most heartless and insensitive doctors in the world and they work in the public sector.
AFC Parliamentarian, Michael Carrington, told me he rushed his daughter to the Diamond hospital last month with excruciating pain. The shift had ended, but the incoming shift of doctors refused to work because they wanted the serving area cleaned up. So they simple relaxed chatted with each other, while his daughter had fainted with pain.
Do you know in Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica and in small Bermuda, there have been cases of doctors charged with manslaughter after it was determined that their incompetence was the reason for patient-death? Do you think in this wild parched land of Guyana that could ever happen?
Dale Andrews died from a heart attack and in his eulogy at the church; Prime Minister Nagamootoo said that Cabinet ended before schedule because of the church service. At the Georgetown Public Hospital, a doctor refused to write a prescription for Dale when he appeared at the hospital after his tablets ran out. I was there. I complained to the CEO, Mike Khan and medical superintendent Dr. Sheik Amir. That doctor was never disciplined. She still works there.