Public Health Minister, colleagues should read the GPHC Act

Dear Editor,

For those of us who know better of the organisational relationships legally established between the Ministry of Health originally (now Ministry of Public Health) and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, this is a plea for the incumbent Minister and colleagues to at least read the Act under which the Georgetown Hospital became incorporated.

It is unfortunate that egoism keeps getting in the way of organisational logic. It is hardly a disposition that redounds to an image of competence, moreso at a time when integrity is under question.

So that one hopes that the report of arrogance that speaks to ‘justification’ for micro-managing the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, by one who apparently is unaware of its autonomous status, is reflective only of the stubbornness of the under-informed.

The presumption that any intellectual superiority exists over the range of medical specialists residing in the corporation could hardly square with the palpable inability to differentiate amongst: • ward sisters • nurses (qualified) • nursing assistants • nurse aides, for example, all of whom are inanely referred to as ‘nurses’ – resulting in the inherent indifference to the poor quality of service administered.

Woefully also, no one seems to have noticed the extinction of the critical category of the Medex.

How do you account for the regular maternal fatalities?

Yours faithfully, E B John