Dear Editor,
On November19 Ms Carmel DeSouza aged 84 of Lot 532 Determa Street, Mackenzie was involved in an accident and was taken to the Linden Hospital Complex building which was not so long ago commissioned and complimented as a state-of-the-art institution. Ms DeSouza was attended to by medical personnel and was told she had a broken ankle. After spending two days in serious pain, the doctor finally transferred her to the Public Hospital Georgetown by way of an ambulance on November 21. On arrival at the GPH, Ms Desouza was refused admission and had to be taken to a relative’s home where she stayed for the remainder of that day and night.
On the following day, Ms DeSouza was taken to the Mercy Hospital where x-rays was done and it was discovered she had two broken bones in the ankle. She was operated on immediately which was a success and she is recovering quite well.
We have bigger hospitals and more doctors and nurses, larger schools and more teachers, but our culture and upbringing is what we need to change in order to give good service to each other. Let us not try – let us do the right thing. The question we must ask ourselves is, if Ms DeSouza couldn’t afford the cost of a private hospital, what would have happened?
What if she was a diabetic, waiting so long? If she hadn’t had relatives in Georgetown like many of us, what would have happened?
When Mackenzie, Wismar and Christianburg was not a town, we were equipped with the best medical personnel, teachers, athletes ‒ and the list goes on; today we are a town but we have lost many too many!
Yours faithfully,
B Winslow Parris
Editor’s note
Mr Parris’s letter alerted us to this case, and we followed it up in a report captioned ‘Octogenarian with broken ankle sent away from GPH without treatment’ which appeared in our edition of December 8.