MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENT Dr Denis Lowe said it was a crying shame that the former Barbados Labour Party administration had failed to finish the St John Polyclinic.
Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday on a $4 million resolution to provide for payment of invoices in respect to the construction of that polyclinic, Lowe recalled that in the late 1990s a man who lived on the East Coast Road had suffered an asthma attack and died because it took the ambulance from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital a long time to reach him.
He said this was why it was “a crying shame that the previous administration could have sat on this project and refuse to complete it only because it felt that the people of St John were not worthy of having this kind of service provision right in their backyard”.
Lowe said the people of St John had every right like all Barbadians to have easy access to health care, and he therefore had to applaud the Government and the Minister of Health, who had earlier announced that the polyclinic, which had suffered years of delay, would be completed by October.
“I applaud all of us for having the fortitude to pick it up in very difficult economic circumstances because we believe in its virtue,” said Lowe.
Stating that decentralization of health care was critical because it gave the community an opportunity to participate in the delivery and provision of health care services, he said the St John polyclinic was part of a larger commitment of the Government to look after Barbadians’ education, health, wellness and quality of life.
“It has to be a national commitment to ensuring that every single citizen at every stage of his or her development, in whatever walk of life that citizen may be, has the opportunity to have viable health care in Barbados,” he said. (RJ)
