Area Representative Says No Dialysis for PG Patients

Oscar Requeña

Even as the Petrocaribe money continues to roll, the initiative continues to generate criticism. Actually it’s not the initiative, per se, but the priorities of the government which controls the coffers and holds the purse-strings. There’s been a lot of talk about Mother’s Day Cheer and Mortgage Cheer and Christmas Cheer, but one representative says there needs to be more talk about addressing problems in the health sector. Like the dialysis program, for example. For those unfortunate enough to need it, it is prohibitively expensive, and even for those who can scrape the funds to pay for it, access is limited. We are told that currently, someone has to die to make space. That’s how urgent the situation is, and Toledo West Area Representative Oscar Requeña says that Petrocaribe needs to stop rolling, and start assisting the people who need it the most.

Oscar Requeña, P.U.P. Area Representative, Toledo West

“Government sees it fit to spend a lot of money in other areas that are certainly not relevant and not necessary and I will just cite one example. When the government can take nine hundred and five thousand dollars, almost a million dollars, and spend it on seventeen U.D.P. representatives for Mother’s Day cheer, that is a serious concern to me as a taxpayer and to the rest of the taxpayers in this country. Down in the Toledo district, we know that diabetes is a leading cause of death in our country. More and more we are seeing people who require dialysis care and certainly government seems absolutely not interested. They could have taken that money – almost a million dollars in Mother’s day cheer, and set up a dialysis system either at the Southern Regional Hospital or at Punta Gorda so that our people can have access to these basic but necessary health services. And that is why I am saying that government has to, and particularly the Ministry of Health, needs to revisit their policies and programs and priorities, and stop squandering the people’s money in other areas that are not benefitting the people.  I can tell you that just a couple months ago we had a former government employee who used to work with the Ministry of Agriculture, the late Mr. Maitland Ranguy, and I will call his name may he rest in peace. You know he came to us, his family came to us…we were trying to get him into the system at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. We managed to speak to the C.E.O. and at one point we were trying to get to the Ministry of Health and we absolutely got nowhere. I mean, the family was so devastated and so depressed that here we had somebody who had served the government and the country and yet could not access basic dialysis health care.”