PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Health Cornelius de Weever told members of the media on Wednesday at the Council of Ministers press briefing that he must bring clarity on the situation at the St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC).
Minister De Weever said now that politics is in the air there are politicians that are paying as much as $1000.00 for advertising regarding the SMMC to repeat the very things he has said on a number occasions. "The ads that are now being played do not bring forth any original ideas from the politicians that are paying for them."
As for the expansion of the St. Maarten Medical Center building Minister de Weever said services and equipment have been and will continue to be a priority for his Ministry, the current government and St. Maarten in general.
He said for this reason he gave SMMC a permit for the expansion and increases in tariffs. "This ties into the entire health system which is being reformed, it also ties into the medical tourism policy which clearly states that medical tourism (regionally and/or internationally) must compliment SMMC and not compete with it.
The Minister further explained that there are questions that have to be asked in order for answers to be provided. He asked how many times Coomeva offered SMMC and SZV the possibility of having specialists visit the medical institution? How many times has Coomeva offered e-consults to SMMC and was willing to provide the equipment for it?
Minister de Weever said when those persons visited St. Maarten they met with him and gave him an update on their negotiations with SMMC and SZV and the resistance they received from both institutions, the contracts Coomeva presented were never signed, which according to the Minister of Health would have saved St. Maarten a lot of monies. He chided the former commissioners whom he said does not accept responsibility and created private institutions that change from a managerial board to a supervisory board, then to a supervisory council.
He said doing this created an unsurmountable amount of chaos at SMMC thus hindered the expansion from taking place during their tenure because at the time it was not a priority for the commissioners. Minister De Weever then lashed out at MP Theodore Heyliger and asked if the former Minister was sleeping under a bridge or somewhere else?
"The savings from travelling abroad by plane or by air ambulance and being close to your family while receiving care on St. Maarten is nothing new and is the very basis why I have, the Ministry and the Inspectorate has worked to improve quality care on St. Maarten and working with the SMMC and the Louis Constant Fleming hospital to provide care to all of us."
The Minister further explained that there are many newly built and under construction empty hospitals in the regions such as St. Lucia and Antigua. "St. Maarten does not need a shell that has no parking and is in a VROMI flood zone number 3.
"There are those who start a project and leave the mess behind for others to fix it the right way. Therefore you are right I don't want to build a hospital that lays empty like the new government building. I don't want to build a hospital like the bridge whose hydraulics and lights do not work after several months. I do not want to build a hospital like Front Street and Back Street that falls apart due to bad infrastructure. I do not want to build a hospital caught up in who owns what like the harbor. I do not want a picture and no financial plans on how every dollar will be spent.
Too often we are quick to build things and projects because of elections and then we have no way of maintaining it. I do not want the expansion of SMMC to be part of any of these never ending stories. St. Maarten needs the expansion of SMMC to be done the right way. The same way the Point Blanche water plant was constructed. No corruption, no evasion only transparency and accountability."
De Weever said several ideas have been discussed in his Minisry with Mr. Ralph Barret the Regional advisor and lead consultant. Health Financing and improving the access to HIV services for mobile and migrant populations in the Caribbean. However, the question remains as to how St. Maarten will pay for these things. Instead government chose to focus on prevention which will decrease healthcare cost, furthermore when focus is placed on quality care, the costs for doctors will also decrease and SZV and SMMC can be held accountable for quality care.
He said when the Visitor Health Fee is introduced which is an insignificant cost that can be charged on airline tickets or cruise ships. A simple $1.00 per head will generate 1.7-1.8 million cruise ship- projections for 2 million passengers and ½ million stay-over visitors we can collect 2.2 -2.3 or even 2.5 million dollars to be used specifically for our national health infrastructure that serves both the resident and visitor populations.
"By introducing a Visitor Health Fee we can improve the health infrastructure like our ambulance system, mobile medical unit and our health management information system, all of this can be seen in the context of our country moving towards achieving Universal Coverage in health."
A Public Health Emergency Fund can also be introduced, PHEF, to be established to assist St. Maarten in dealing with Public Health emergencies to further protect our health against the spread and outbreak of infectious and communicable diseases. "Our recent experiences with the epidemic of Chikungunya or the global transmission of diseases like bird flu or even Ebola highlight their rapid spread and demonstrate the serious health and economic consequences for vulnerable populations like ours." Similarly, with the advent of larger cruise ships, the examples of illnesses occurring on these vessels whilst in port which we experienced in 2012 and the Turks & Caicos Islands as well, highlight the urgent need for public health resources that are capable to deal with these risks when they occur.
In addition to meeting the public health risks of infectious diseases, the health system could also partially address the needs arising from trauma and other serious events by providing access to first-line treatment in St. Maarten and assisting with transportation when locally unavailable.
