Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter of the Guyana Medical Council (GMC) published in SN (Nov 22) in response to my last Friday column in which I asserted a previous position that many of the Cuban trained Guyanese doctors are not competent. In its letter which was originally a press release, the GMC advised me to report any misconduct or malpractice. To use strong words, this is blatant hypocrisy. I have done not one or two but dozens of columns on misconduct, terrible attitudes, incompetence and malpractice in the medical profession in Guyana. In many of those columns, I reported on the death that resulted. The GMC never in even one instance took an investigative look. This is a body that does not serve the interest of poor patients who have suffered and who have paid the ultimate price because of our broken system in the delivery of public medicine.
I will cite four columns the contents of which would have attracted the attention of any decent medical council in any decent country. One concerned Dale Andrews, a senior reporter at Kaieteur News; the second was a case of an Amerindian woman from the interior; the third related to Leonard Craig; and the fourth involved my Chinese neighbour at the corner of Louisa Row and Hadfield Street who was shot when his restaurant was robbed. These four examples were made into separate columns. The officials at the GMC probably didn’t read any of these four articles plus about a dozen more I did on medical malpractice. The GMC is as incompetent as any other dysfunctional institution in this country. Medical malpractice has killed dozens at public institutions, all of whom came from the poorer classes. More will die. No one will sue. The GMC will not act. Why should they? Those who could afford it go to private hospitals.
There is also the more recent case recounted in another column about when my mother-in-law took ill, and went to a private hospital where she died. My cousin was ill and was hospitalized at the same hospital. He died on Republic Day, 2014 without seeing a doctor. All these details are in my columns.
Medical malpractice is more severe than police blundering in this country.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
