…And many of the purchases are useless
The Belize Medical and Dental Union also challenged this morning the management of the K.H.M.H. for a release issued on Monday in which they stated that there were printing errors on the price list of supplies acquired. To add salt to the wounds, according to the union, some of the supplies have been rendered useless. The cost to tax payers is sixteen thousand dollars plus, and the doctors feel the purchases were made to accommodate political friends. And in the words of one doctor, it is like the hidden cells of a cancer doing the dirty work.
Dr. John Sosa, President, B.M.D.U.
“We previously were getting a contrast called Omnipaque of very good quality for a reasonable price. Then someone decided to buy sixteen thousand dollars worth of a contrast without asking anyone and the radiologist says I don’t even know what this is so we can’t use it. It is now sitting in the storeroom at Karl Heusner in the boxes. So then they decided that they’d buy contrast again. They consulted and decided to buy a contrast that is used around Belize but that the radiologist in the hospital has not used before without consulting the radiologist or the people in the radiology department. What has happened; three people have had allergic reactions and those have been documented by the doctors, contrary to what the people higher up have said, that there’s no documentation, it has been documented and we know it has. The last patient who had this reaction was a cancer patient of a doctor of Dr. Beatrice Thompson. You know cancer patients have worse problems; they do chemo, they get all kinds of illnesses and we don’t want to put them through much more suffering and this is a child with cancer for three years having a reaction. She had to be treated by the emergency room physician, came to see her doctor and said you know what I feel really bad, I feel like I’m going to die. We don’t think that has to happen.”
Dr. Beatrice Thompson, Secretary, B.M.D.U.
“When cancer is detected, it throws everything into an uproar. It is disquieting, it requires some very tough decisions, even some very excruciating and invasive treatment. Such is corruption. When it is hidden, there are no worries. Life continues with no one the wiser, but the unseen and hidden cells are doing very dirty work.”
