Recessions are times of austerity and can make life difficult for those who have to live through them. We have had this experience recently and some say we are still in the throes of the worst recession of the last 100 years.
Be that as it may, governments everywhere make efforts to ensure that, by their policies, things do not fall apart during the recession and that the centre holds. We have evidence that this has been the approach of past administrations and it is the approach of the present administration.
And yet, the current picture presented of the scene at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) is enough to cause even the most battle hardened Barbadian to wonder whether the centre is indeed holding at that venerable institution.
We have had the assurance of no less a person than the Minister of Health that efforts are being made to stabilize the financial operations of the QEH in the midst of the continuing turmoil, but the report that it owes six pharmaceutical companies $20 million is shocking, to say the least.
It is a shocking story because the fact of the debt has placed the QEH in a position in which it is dependent on the good graces of these companies to continue the supply of drugs in emergency situations. Sometimes, from all reports, this is done after a part payment of the existing debt.
We applaud the public-spiritedness of these companies, but when we consider that the QEH is our only major tertiary health facility ultimately responsible for the care of the temporarily sick and infirm, and that the drugs include a list of 57 normally and frequently used in the treatment of some of the major non-communicable diseases, then it becomes clear that however one looks at it, the situation does not look good. It is not good, for the QEH and its professionals or for this nation!
We attach major significance to the statement that cleanliness is next to Godliness and we do so because we believe that cleanliness will allow us to enjoy a certain freedom from disease. In other words, we see efficient delivery and the availability of health services as important and in the context of an increasingly aging population in which more and more people will require more and more remedial and palliative care, we feel that there will be legitimate concern about the QEH, especially since it is not the only example of Government’s economic distress.
A serious and dispassionate review may be required of the financing policy on health to determine the efficient cost of running the QEH; and concurrently with that there must be a policy decision which will determine whether the hospital is to be regarded as a social service or is to be partly financed by the public at the point of delivery.
We may no longer be able to afford to run the QEH as a social service paid for by the taxpayers. But if we could more meaningfully engage the polyclinics by offering the kind of non-emergency services done at the QEH, we might just be able to run a more cost efficient critical care institution.
But something must be done, and soon!