The reason for this has to do with an article that appeared in one of the daily newspapers last month which stated and I quote" The Central government of the Netherlands Antilles has also been able to secure 25000 courses of antiviral medication from the Netherlands to treat the virus if someone is infected. St. Maarten is to receive 6,250 courses of the medication end of quote." Now to find out that only 1000 courses will be sent to the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba of which 500 will be placed in storage. This means that 500 to be distributed among the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. I believe we need an explanation as to why the amount has been reduced from 25000 to 1000.
"God forbid if an epidemic breaks out. The World Health Organization in an article stated and I quote": The WHO has predicted the new H1N1 could eventually infect a third of the world's population" end of quote." Pantophlet said in his calculations he is looking at about 2.3 billion people.
The state secretary said his questions are do the island have enough of this medication available? In addition, what would happen to the people in our region and specifically the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba if there weren't enough medication on hand? If my memory serves me right, the drug makers said that it would take some 6 months to produce this drug and during this period, we have to be dealing with the common flu and now the H1N1 swine flu. In addition, we still have some more months to go.
