LAST week I called a medical institution to make an inquiry on the medical expertise available that can advise on prescriptions either way, in the case of a person that had a drug addiction relapse. A doctor came on and I explained that the person was exhibiting erratic behaviour; the doctor on the phone told me that I should advise the family to take the person for tests at GPHC because a number of things could be happening including a possible brain tumour. She’s possibly right, but though I spoke she didn’t listen. I had said that this action was a result of a relapse after a year. I’m not a medical professional but I’ve read all I can on brain tumours because I grew up in a Guyana where every home had a medical book that one’s guardian was always consulting- I can’t remember the name but it was a red hardcover book.

This phone call was about an addict in relapse, none of the symptoms of tumours that I’ve read about in my need to get a new edition ‘Mayo Clinic’ was evident between the space, from the abstaining to the relapse, if she had only spared some time to listen. There are jokes I’ve heard growing up about doctors writing prescriptions before the patient even finished speaking about the ailment. One can only find humour when experiencing it for one’s self.

The Minister of Health Volda Lawrence told nurses “We are not there yet” in respect to medical care and rational modernisation; she is correct. ‘We’ both our outdated administrative framework, and the population, are a step away from superstition in our understanding of illnesses. We attribute everything to ‘somebody wuk pon meh’.

Though this superstition has some merit, in that many accusations of spiritual harm can be attributed to inherited methods of organic poisoning that constitute herbal and animal part- concoctions that with death most likely are not easily detected in autopsies, and doctors during the strange illnesses that result from ingestion can be baffled and at wits’ end to arrive at a diagnosis. In some cases doctors even urge families to seek external help,

referring to exploring the multitudes of frauds to find the two per cent that actually have an understanding of those arcane formulas and the antidotes, and we also defined every abnormal child as the result of a botched abortion. We have never documented the practices on what so-called herbal mystics give to their clients, especially the respected few. We really don’t document anything and that is one of the national lethargies that have to be challenged and quickly changed as we surrender Intellectual Property items to external explorers, through this unexplained inability to be proactive.

We live in a volatile world, where medical horror is evident and I’m not sure that our legislators have paid attention to that fact. That leaves our population vulnerable. Recently, I walked in on a conversation between a manager and an employee about the employee’s health. It appeared that he had visited a public medical practitioner and was told that he required instant surgery and was hesitant. The manager sent him to the company

physician, who assured him that nothing was wrong with him. This he informed me of about a week later when I saw him on the street. I queried why did the first doctor lie, was he a fraud? Then he inserted a very morbid possibility of organ harvesting. We spoke for a while and I just couldn’t help pondering suppose he was right; what is there in Guyana to prevent it from happening here?

In 2010 India arrested Amit Kumar for creating one of the world’s largest kidney trafficking rings, which had clients from the United States, Canada, Greece, the Middle East, Turkey and India. The victims were poor low caste Indians who were paid as low as $300 Rupees.

This trade is not exclusive to Kumar. In Pakistan entire villages are populated by men who have one kidney; in China harvesting from executed prisoners have supported a booming transplant industry. The Philippines stopped its own transplant tourism in 2008.I am almost certain that we do not have legislation to cover the bold macabre world of medical bad business, which includes the illegal experimenting of drugs on unsuspecting persons, with especially mental-based illnesses.

Eight years ago, a police friend in a conversation on addicts in Guyana responded to my protests by asking me, “If we pick up all de junkie in town, gon be couple hundred ah dem, suh whey we gon put all ah them?”

I can imagine the frustration of the family that locked up the young man in a pig pen in Sophia, but, what was their alternative and what will be the state’s option now that the victim is in their possession? The last government pulled down, rather than renovate the aged and ailing Mental Asylum in New Amsterdam and replaced it. I’m not sure what has replaced it. The current government has to rebuild the human factor to manage any such specialist facility, especially like mental disorders which the medical fraternity on a whole is still not sure what is really going on in the brain, but still have to manage patients with disorders, especially with our contributing factors of the proliferation of mind-altering substances, the health task is tremendous.