August 10, 2009
Dear Editor,
Baby Jayden’s tragic death resulting from his chocking on a bean has exposed gross deficiencies in Belize’s medical care. The failure of two medical institutions to timely treat baby Jayden in a manner so as to save his life is both shocking and alarming. Adding the request for $15,000 to be paid up front before treating his life-threatening emergency indicates an insidious situation. A situation that can place the health care and lives of all Belizeans in jeopardy. Neither medical facility attempted the Heimlich procedure.
Anyone who was properly trained in first aid should have recognized a situation that lent itself to the necessity of attempting the Heimlich Procedure (maneuver). The procedure is so common that one does not have to look to a medical dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “a first aid procedure for dislodging an obstruction from a person’s wind pipe in which a sudden strong pressure is applied to the abdomen between the navel and rib cage”.
The procedure is more fully described on the internet; click on “choking for the conscious infant, or choking for the unconscious infant”. The procedure is so simple that, in an emergency, adults can perform it on themselves. It can be accomplished while bending over an object that asserts pressure on the body at the right location.
It appears that the doctors at Belize Healthcare Partners Ltd. (BHPL) overlooked such a procedure that would have taken only seconds and should have cost no more than $100, to be paid up front. However, they requested $15,000 up front before they would commence Baby Jayden’s treatment.
The Government’s Western Regional Hospital in Belmopan, after failure, directed the patient to BHPL for treatment. The directing of patients to BHPL by Government medical facilities is a common practice. The practice results from the Government’s failure to provide Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) with the necessary equipment and personnel to diagnose and treat many medical conditions.
Though the Government has failed to fully equip KHMH, the prior Prime Minister guaranteed a $34,000,000 loan to Universal Health Services, a private hospital, and predecessor to BHPL. The money that the prior Government loaned to cronies and failed to attempt to recover would have equipped KHMH as a first class hospital that did not have to transfer patients.
The Government’s transfer of patients to a facility that will not treat patients unless they are able to pay for the treatment prior to its commencement is a common practice. In doing so the Government is putting out the poor and the middle class, who cannot raise the money, to suffer and possibly die, without treatment.
How many patients are there that can raise the $15,000 that the father, Eckert Guy, was requested to raise before treatment of baby Jayden would commence? How many patients would die while such an attempt to raise money was in progress?
It has been made abundantly clear that the life and health of the poor and the middle class have had a very low priority with the Government. Is it contempt for the poor and the middle class that results in their denial of proper medical care?
Or is the issue, for some questionable reason, that BHPL be able to maximize its profits? Or is it stupidity on the part of elected officials? The same officials who do not require ambulances to be properly equipped with life-saving equipment and medicines necessary to maintain the patient’s life during transportation, so that the patient will not be dead on arrival at the hospital?
How frequently does one read in the newspapers that the patient was dead on arrival at the hospital? Ambulances are to save lives.
Kenneth Gale