Aiming for more gladiators

THE EDITOR: Promises of Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh for 2024 and beyond are: the main general hospitals will be refurbished and modernised by 2025 and the San Fernando General Hospital in particular will undergo betterment to resemble a world-class facility while its staff will experience higher motivation. This is to keep his dream of "good as any and better than many.”

Dr Anand Rampersad continues to advocate increased physical activity for a healthy lifestyle. This is well in tune with the standards the World Health Organization (WHO) has set for wellness.

Even layman Ian Green is preaching that our children should be protected from bad or unhealthy foods.

When covid19 was playing itself, the National Racquet Centre in Tacarigua was converted to a temporary hospital and was off-limits to sportsmen and sportswomen, having to avoid the very arena that propelled them to wellness.

Did we not learn from covid19? Why do we follow the international standards conveniently? As the population expands, who is observing how we are being overrun by diseases?

We have not taken care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and covid19 is not finished with us yet. We have not corrected our faults yet.

A resurgence and the rate of increase will always ensure that there is a shortage of beds; accident and emergency will always be overcrowded; the ratio of doctors and nurses to patients is far from tolerable and contributing to a demotivated staff; and the air conditioning units are succumbing to overcrowded clinics.

It is still enlivening to see hospitals upgraded and trying to stay abreast of the demands for medical services.

Another school of thought professes that if sports and physical activity become a way of life there will be far less need for hospitals. Remember that a sporting facility had to be closed to make way for a covid19 hospital.

Is this a case for preaching, teaching and practising preventative medicine rather than hoping to increase our capacity to provide palliative care?

Researchers have agreed that the known causes of diseases are unhealthy diet, inadequate exercises, harbouring poor or negative mental states, and being out of tune with life spiritually. When combined enough toxicity is produced to render the body dysfunctional.

Sport is an excuse to keep the body in pristine condition. Why aren’t more resources devoted to establishing wellness centres and stadiums? Let’s aim for more gladiators and arrest the loss of production due to illness.

The journey should begin with educating every individual what life is about – caring for this supernatural vehicle, the body. In the same way guidelines were given to repel covid19, a national routine can be defined so that the factors adversely impacting health can be restrained.

A healthy nation is a productive people that do not contemplate curtailing output or abstaining from work.

The thrust to upgrade hospitals is telling the population that it is all right to get sick and the State will take care of you. Let’s bury that falsehood.

Instead, each person should be taught the way and that the penalty for deliberate deviation is to finance your way back to the healthy path.

The population was accused of bad-mouthing the system. But we want a better system, not mediocrity. The real test of an efficient medical system is our administrators relying on the home-grown system for medical counselling and doing their annual check-ups without even thinking about going abroad for treatment.

Illnesses can be reduced if not avoided. We must strive for independence by starting a herbal industry and making it a parallel healthcare system, an alternative for the patient, and we must recognise the herbalist and encourage locals to be in tune with what Mother Nature has provided.

The use of advanced technology will reduce the negative impact of the shortage and the inexperience of doctors. There is efficiency to be gained from diagnosing the patient without requesting an input and filing and retrieval of information using an identification card.

Many of these things are already in the pipeline but the ideas have met an impenetrable wall. Are we going to strive for world-class status or not?

Team up with the Ministry of Education, change the outlook and revamp the process; the Ministry of Agriculture to produce healthier foods and the Ministry of Health to do some house cleaning.

Are you not irked by ministers and administrators who burn up the national coffers pursuing health and a misguided public desiring a return to wellness?

What is life all about? Maintaining the God-given gift of our bodies.

LENNOX FRANCIS

via e-mail