Dear Editor,
Mr. Basdeo Gobin began experiencing heart problems in 2011 and at some point was a patient of the Caribbean Heart Institute attached to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. On April 15, 2014, after his limited finances were almost consumed by the cost of treatment and drugs, his wife made an application to the Ministry of Health for financial assistance to pay for by-pass surgery. She continued to pursue the application by regular inquiries and received a constant response: that the application was being looked at.
Later on she learnt that the application had been sent to Cabinet on June 16. Cabinet did nothing and on July 13 the patient died at his home, aged 57. It means that the application had to endure the bureaucracy of the Ministry for two months and the sloth of the high priests in the Cabinet while Gobin’s condition was slowly deteriorating. Up to the time of Gobin’s death no decision had yet been made by Cabinet.
The wife of the dead man had not been asking for millions: indeed she had begun raising from family members some portion of the $1,800,000 that the Heart Institute was charging for the operation on the understanding that the Ministry would provide about $1,000,000. As the saddened wife said had she not been led to believe that the application was being favourably considered she would have pursued other donors with greater urgency. According to reports, if Gobin had had the operation by mid-June he might still have been alive.
We as citizens must ask why a decision on medical treatment in such cases, or in any case, would be a matter for Cabinet. We contrast this with the urgency with which former president Bharrat Jagdeo was medivacked to the United States of America for the treatment of a virus at the cost to the public funds of between $20 million and $30 million.
The wife of Mr. Gobin has agreed for this letter to be published. She hopes that the government will be far more sensitive to the plight of seriously ill persons and to allow for decisions on financial assistance in such cases to be made by professionals and social workers.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
