DLP Tv's Health & Wellness Show - Brain drain in the Healthcare Sector

Now, Mr. Denny, he mentioned human resources, he mentioned about based on the analysis, based on the circumstances he mentioned there, there's a serious brain drain, a serious brain drain. We have doctors staying overseas, staying overseas, and you mentioned, you know, I believe the hospital short of staff, I mean, what is the solution there? Right, that is an issue because a lot of the medical practices, persons in the medical field, because of the stress that they're under, they're leaving for greener pastures. So some of them may be leaving to go into their own private practice. If you work in any environment and you find that it is very stressful and it's not necessarily working out for you, you're going to go someplace where it's easier. So we're losing a lot of our nurses to places like Bermuda, Cayman Islands, to the UK, same thing with the doctors as well, persons that we have trained. If you ask the CEO at the hospital to give you the list of all of the specialties which are covered, I am certain that there will be a number of gaps because people do not recognize that you have to wait for a pathologist to come into Barbados to do autopsies and that's why it's taken so long for, you know, once before you die, you can safely say that your funeral will be in the next two weeks because the body will be released from the hospital. Now you have to wait and see if the person asks for an autopsy. You know that it's a much longer period. And then you also have the number of murders as well which would need the forensic testing going along with that as well. You have basic specialists for a number of areas that are not available. Persons who are waiting for operations for more than a year simply because the specialists are not there. Dialysis patients who may need to have the ports put in, who have to stay in the hospital for three and four months because again they either don't have the catheters or they don't have the specialists to do the treatment in terms of, well the doctor said I can't tell me the correct term, for the fistula, to do the fistulas and so forth, which is the safest way of getting dialysis because when you have the port, those persons cannot get those ports wet. So you can't take a shower, can't go to the beach, but if you have the fistula you have a little bit more flexibility. All of these, and then you have issues with persons with the ports and end up having infections and they'll have to spend periods of time in the hospital setting. All of these are things that we need to be concerned about as well. I'd like to add a few words, and the point I want to make here is in relation to barbarian doctors studying people who are now in the hospital. A lot of these doctors wanted to stay here in Barbados and get back to the Barbadian community, okay, so let's say it's not a bad idea, but Barbados refused to create the conditions for those doctors to work here and to gain an opportunity to do the part one or part two of the Caribbean Medical Council examination, okay, and those doctors felt insulted and they went to Jamaica, and when they went to Jamaica, the government of Jamaica gave them apartments, gave them a motor car, gave them a service, and treated them as doctors and helped them through the process, the treatment process, so they were able to do the Caribbean medical examination, and now they can work in any Caribbean country. After that, and after going through those conditions, they felt that they should get back their service to the people of Jamaica, to the government of Jamaica, and that's where we made a mistake. Over 200 students from 1998, we trained in Cuba, okay, if we have doctors, Barbadian doctors trained in Cuba working in Jamaica, they're heads of departments, heads of polyclinics who specialize, you have a leading doctor in Trinidad right now who have a very, very, very big private practice, and he also gives back to public service in Trinidad and Cuba. Okay, so that we have to, we have to seriously, this is a major area as it relates to people's development, because health and wellness is important, and I think that the Democratic Labour Party need to sit down, assess, analyze, and develop a strong program that we can put before the people of Barbados for health and wellness, because we have a lot of, if you just recall the programs that we did, people complaining for the QEAs, complaining for opportunities for appointments, complaining for the way how they're treated in terms of the health facilities in Barbados, and this must become a major agenda for the Democratic Labour Party, because to me, Democratic Labour Party is the alternative government. We have to develop an alternative program or project to what's happening in Barbados because of the IMF program, and health must become part of a major area in terms of dealing with that IMF program, because a number of people in Barbados are suffering because of that IMF program. Working-class people, all of our social services are being threatened, health facilities are being threatened, workers' rights are being threatened, and I think this is the main agenda. Health and wellness is a key area for us in the Democratic Labour Party. And some serious money should be pumped in this health and wellness, and seriously, the government would have spent $50 million on the World Cup project, really and truly, I believe that. Just put some coffers where wellness is concerned.