Saturday, February 6, 2010

Time To Review St. Jude Hospital & NIC/Government Relations

.........................
Posted by at

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good piece Mr. Downes. I believe we need to have a clear appreciation of the recurrent costs of operating the new St. Judes Hospital alongside the new General Hospital. I've made the point before that we cannot afford to have 2 major secondary healthcare institutions on an island of 150,000. Barbados with a population of nearly 300,000 has only one General hospital. We cannot claim to emphasize primary health care and then spend nearly EC$400 million dollars on two hospitals which will come on stream almost at the same time. Where will the doctors, nurses, radiographers for these facilities come from? How will they be paid when the majority of the users of the facilities cannot pay for the services they receive? We need to be realistic. St. Judes with 88 beds serves a catchment of 40-45,000 people. But even at its peak, only half of these beds were occupied. Yet 6 years ago, the annual budget of St. Judes was about EC$22 million, of which Government provided about $8 million. But even as Government gave this money, (most of the time late), Victoria remained underfunded. It is true that generally St. Judes gave a better service than VH but that service was provided largely by volunteer staff from overseas. Is this the basis on which Government is going to pump in all this money to rebuild St. judes into a full general hospital? What happens if the volunteers stop coming? This is not about denying the people of the south a decent health facility. We can put the general hospital in Vieux-fort for all I care. But we just cannot afford to have 2 general hospitals in a small island like Saint Lucia. Let's be realistic. Let's scale back on the plans for St. Judes. At least let's take a phased approach to its reconstruction, with a 40 bed facility and with space for expansion in the future. We can put any surplus money into a Development Fund and use the interest from that fund to meet any dips in cash flow. But please, let be realistic.

CSI

February 6, 2010 at 9:03 AM
Anonymous said...

CSI, you are either jealous of St.Lucia having 2 hospitals compared to the elitist Bajans or a heartless person. St.Judes has and will always be there for the people.

February 6, 2010 at 12:27 PM
Anonymous said...

CSI...what do you have against St. Judes?

February 6, 2010 at 6:40 PM
Anonymous said...

I have absolutely nothing against St. Judes. Before the fire it was a better run hospital than VH, even with all its problems. I got excellent treatment there in 1995. I paid in full for my treatment,and I gave voluntary support whenever I could. But I know that thousands who got good treatment, who did not pay or could not pay for it. That is the reality of our situation. The figures I gave are in from a report commissioned by the last Government. I am not calling for St. Judes to be shut down. This isn't about jealousy or being heartless. This is about being a realistic Saint Lucian. I know exactly what will happen with 3 hospitals that we are unable to maintain. Usually it is those who see no problems who will be the first to complain when thigns start to fall apart.

CSI

February 8, 2010 at 7:37 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)