Patient detained after ‘clash’ with staff at Skeldon Hospital

Jun 01, 2018 News

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Patients at the Skeldon Public Hospital yesterday were in an uproar in the institution’s compound after they alleged that staff at the registry area (where patients register for medication after seeing the doctor) was not tending to them in a fair and efficient manner.
They claimed that there was a built up line, with persons

waiting for long periods while the clerks were tending to “special persons”. It was after the patients highlighted to the clerk about what she was doing that the staff “shut the small door on we”. One staff attached to the institution

also reportedly made remarks towards the patients who complained to the media that they were “disgusting”.
Sharda Mangar who was in the line reportedly waiting for a long period of time to be engaged by the clerk, disclosed that she visited the hospital at approximately 9:30 am yesterday to accompany her ill sister. She stated that when they arrived they noticed the “unusually long line” at the registry area but proceeded to meet with the doctor.
“When we came out back the line was very long so we noticed that the people at the side were getting looked after and the people at the front in the line was not and the line kept getting longer. So I called on the girl and asked her how come people getting look after on the side and not in the line and she say that they have clinic patients and out -patients clinic. I told her both clinic and out-patients are in two separate lines and I told them they need to get themselves organized and she said ‘I am not working here’, Mangar complained.
According to her, patients were in the line from 6:00 am yesterday and noon had reached with them still waiting, “people were trying to video to show what nonsense they were doing and they stop us and we asked if we can speak to someone and they told us there is nobody to speak to. We are paying taxes in this country, it is our right. You cannot come to a public hospital and be treated like dogs and pigs. Most of the patients had to go away because they could not get a prescription because it was not registered”.
She stated that the office door was closed after patients began to complain and was not reopened for the remainder of the day. Mangar stressed that it was not the first time patients was being treated in such a manner, since “it is a norm”. It was also revealed that the staff went as far as issuing threats that the police would be brought in to have her arrested if she continued to video.
“I was not afraid to video because that is my right”, she argued.
When reporters arrived at the institution, patients who filled the benches in the waiting area were immediately moved inside the building by nurses, while there was a maid yelling at the top of her voice in the compound “dem too disgusting I don’t care if the media hear, leh dem hear, dem always coming here and making problems”.
Her loud outbursts were not stopped by any of the staff, including the person in charge, since they allowed her to carry on with lewd remarks towards the patients. When asked to speak with the hospital administrator or the doctor in charge, a female doctor, who refused to provide her name, stated “the administrator is on leave and the doctor in charge is off duty”. She also stated that she was in charge and further directed all questions regarding what she called “an incident” to the Director of Public Health Services in Berbice.
Mangar was later picked up by the police who arrived at the hospital and took her to the Springlands Station. She stated that the police told her that she was detained for disorderly behaviour.
Meanwhile, Alex Foster, Focal Point to MOH stated that the official report he received was that one of the officers who does administrative duties was asked to work at the Accident and Emergency Department registering patients, but because “she does not work in that department she was a bit slow in recording the information so she was taking some time to do that, and because of that the line grew longer”.
According to him, he received reports from the staff that one of the persons in the line, a female began to use her phone and took videos of what was going on and was said to be behaving in a hostile manner.
“The girl asked her to stop flashing her so she can continue doing her work, and she refused to do so, and they maybe had some exchange”, Foster said.
He said that at that point in time the staff felt threatened by the woman and patients’ alleged hostility and they opted to call in the police to “get some semblance of order in the compound”. Foster explained that the police did not arrive as requested. This, he said, led to him make a call to the police himself to visit the hospital to assess the situation. They subsequently did, it was then that they detained Mangar.
Director of Public Health Services, Jevaughn Stephens, who was not in the region when the incident took place, stated that he received a report from Dr. Campbell, who was the doctor in charge at the institution, about the situation, and immediately headed back to Berbice to deal with the matter. Kaieteur News also understands that Stephens has requested to meet with the persons who were detained by the police today.

 

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