To awaken the sleeping and rouse the loitering is a work of supreme mercy, and to seek the truth in everything and everywhere, reveal fraud, foolishness and ineptitude is a work of supreme religious piety. — Miguel de Unamuno

Dear Santa Claus,

I am writing this letter with watery eyes and a nuisance of a runny nose. There is a tugging pain in my back, it feels like I am standing in front of a brick oven overpacked with ‘dawgwood’, which some rural folks say gives off greater heat than a gas stove at full blast. My knees feel unusually wobbly. I have a fever which makes my face feel like I have it over a giant coal stove roasting breadfruit. Luckily, I don’t have a rash and the doctor at the health centre says I am having the flu, not dengue, not leptospirosis, and probably not chikungunya. I have been doing all the necessaries, as directed by medical advice, to get better quickly. Maybe I have contracted the ‘teenager’ chik-V. On the streets last week I overheard a lady telling another that there are three types of the disease: ‘baby’, ‘teenager’, and ‘adult’ chik-V. She explained that the baby comes with fever and headache. The teenager presents with the baby symptoms, but they are more intense, plus a “wicked pain ah back”. The adult chik-V is the combination of baby and teenager symptoms, multiplied several times over, plus a rash, and “it mek yuh ben’ up like ‘S’ for days”, she said.

Oh, Santa, since you live way up there in the North Pole, you might not have heard of chikungunya or chik-V. Well, Santa, chikungunya is a word that comes from the Makonde language of Tanzania in eastern Africa and translates roughly as “that which bends up”, in reference to the severe arthritis-like ache in joints that causes sufferers to contort with pain. It’s usually accompanied by a spiking fever and headache. Chik-V was discovered in Africa in 1953.

Santa, chikungunya virus is transmitted to people through mosquito bites. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on a person already infected with the virus. Infected mosquitoes can then spread the virus to other people through bites. Chikungunya virus is most often spread to people by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. These are the same mosquitoes that transmit the dengue virus. They bite mostly during the daytime.

Santa, let me illustrate some more, in a story in last week’s Sunday Observer, an unfortunate chik-V sufferer, Herman Slater, a 60-year-old gardener, said he was “laid out for almost two weeks this month with unimaginable joint pain, hammer-pounding headaches, and fever that came in waves”.

“I tell you, I was surprised by how painful it was. It was taking me five minutes to get out of bed, and then I could hardly even walk,” Slater said. “My hands were so bad I couldn’t open a bottle, couldn’t comb my hair. Every night I was wet from sweat.”

To date, chikungunya virus has been confirmed in Anguilla, Aruba, Virgin Islands, Dominica, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Barthelemy, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Maarten (Dutch) and St Martin (French), Jamaica, and a few other countries in the region.

Santa, chik-V is no chicken. It is serious. There have been 113 deaths so far linked to the African region’s outbreak, according to the most recent data. Yes, Santa, chikungunya is not only crippling, it can lead to death if not treated with due care, especially if one’s immune system is compromised.

Talking about crippling, the response of the Jamaican Government has been miserable, if not totally incompetent. Santa, our minister of health said the Government was aware of chik-V’s impending arrival for two years. Well, if our preparedness for chik-V is an indication of our best, I shudder to think what would happen if Ebola reaches our shores.

While you prepare to come to Jamaica this Christmas, please pack tons of vitamin C tablets, Panadol, Cetamol Cold and Flu (preferably extra strength), and other pain relievers on your sleigh. Some of our pharmacies are out or are running very low on the precious supplies. According to a pharmacy supervisor in Portland, as reported in the old man of North Street, they had stocked up on 100 boxes of Panadol containing 10,000 tablets. These were all sold in less than three days. Other pharmacies throughout the country can only offer Panadol fumes as a vendor joked in the Papine Market last Friday.

Santa, I don’t want to discourage you from fattening your reindeer for the long ride to Jamaica, but I must warn you that the epidemic reminds me of the lines of the Glenn Jones song: “We only just begun, our romance is not over — got a lot of love to give.” Dr James Hospedales, head of the Caribbean Public Health Authority (CARPHA), says that the disease will peak near 10 months after the first locally transmitted case and that some 60 to 70 per cent of a population will contract the disease. Without, Einstein’s math brain — that means since ’round about July when we confirmed case 1 — the virus will peak in Jamaica round about May 2015. Sigh. I am trying very hard to be optimistic about the additional and required responses that will likely come from the Government up to that time.

Santa, you will also need to bring dozens of calculators, scientific and ordinary adding machines, in your Christmas sack this year. We will need to give one to each government minister and one of either to the Minister of Health Dr Fenton Ferguson and Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. The prime minister recited incorrect statistics in her presentation at the 76th Annual People’s National Party Conference. Santa, up to now the primus inter pares has not said a word on the chik-V epidemic, neither has she given recognition to the error at the Arena two Sundays ago. What must we think, Santa?

Santa, Ferguson totally miscalculated the speed at which the disease would spread, and ironically his constituency was the sounding bell that alerted the country that the Health Ministry was asleep, maybe overdosed. Hundreds of children and scores of teachers plus other citizens in St Thomas were captured by chik-V almost in the twinkling of an eye.

Initially, Ferguson said one Delano Seiveright, Labour Party caretaker for Eastern St Thomas, was just stirring up trouble, trying to score as Dr Peter Phillips our minister of finance puts it, “cheap political points”. As it turned out, Seiveright was right, and now Ferguson has been forced to wipe the egg from his face and eat humble pie. Few gloat at Ferguson’s troubles for, indeed, his predicaments are ours. A valuable lesson can be learned here, however, that is, politics must never be a hostage of common sense.

Santa, before I forget, you need to also carry maybe 80 garbage trucks, at least two fire boats, some new elevators for the KPH, and at least 25 fire engines suited for our roads (the European types which cost US six million a piece, I am told) for Jamaica this Christmas. These are most urgent needs. Please, don’t let the fact that we spent 57 million on the Grand Gala in August cloud your vision of our priorities.

The town of Lucea, the capital of Hanover, has no functioning fire truck. And Lucea is not unique, since many of our towns have ‘hawfa trucks and quarta truck’, some which leak like wicker baskets, and others that have engines that are singing swan songs. How does this come to happen, you may ask, dear Santa? The answer is simply that the Jamaican people are getting the Government they deserve. For far too long we have left governance to too many who are least able, and to some who are suffering with huge status depravity.

Santa, last Sunday, a two-bedroom house in Haughton Meadows, Hanover, was gutted by fire leaving eight persons, including four children, homeless. Santa, by the time a fire truck came from Negril — nearly 13 miles away — the house was reduced to near nothing. Santa, this Hanover family will have a hard time singing this one well-known ditty this Christmas:

“You better watch out,

You better not cry;

Better not pout,

I’m telling you why;

Santa Claus is coming to town

He’s making a list

And checking it twice;

He’s gonna find out

Who’s naughty and nice

Santa Claus is coming to town

He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when you’re awake

He knows if you’ve been good or bad

So be good for goodness sake!

Ohh! You better watch out!

You better not cry,

I’m telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town

Santa Claus is coming

to town!”

Santa, garbage is piling higher and higher in several communities all over the country. While the minister of health has called for a national clean-up day, the National Solid Waste Management Authority’s (NSWMA) top brass has been quick to point out that they don’t have the ‘assets’ — a word that had become popular since a small plane crashed off the coast of Portland — to adequately help in such a cause.

Jennifer Edwards, do you remember her, Santa? She wore those gorgeous hats while she was mayor of Spanish Town — but did little else in the job. Remember her? She is now the CEO for the NSWMA. She was reported in the news as saying that the NSWMA was in a resource crisis. She said that: “…The crisis, highlights the problems of inefficient machines and resource shortage affecting the agency. According to her, optimally, 274 trucks are needed to service the 14 parishes. However, the NSWMA says it owns 55 trucks, most of which are not working, while another 50 are hired. Edwards argues that the NSWMA is further impaired by the frequent malfunctioning of compactors which are used to compress waste at landfills. She says the NSWMA has made a submission to the Government on the needs of the agency.”

Santa, in monetary terms, the NSWMA needs some $5 billion to address the garbage collection needs of the country. If you can dispense with a couple millions of the greenback you have stashed away for a rainy day, please do so now. It is raining great hardships in Jamaica.

So, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santa, please start to pack your reindeer sleigh very early. Jamaica needs you now more than ever.

Cruel and unjust treatment of Karen Reid

Some time ago this newspaper broke the story of Karen Reid who was misdiagnosed with HIV by a State agency while she was pregnant. Her son is now nine years old and was born blind in one eye. Reid sued the Government, which accepted liability, and in April this year the court ordered the State to pay her a total of $9 million with interest. According to a story by Barbara Gayle recently: “In June, the attorney general filed an appeal on the grounds that the award was too high. According to the claim filed in the Court of Appeal, the judge erred in making the award because the medical evidence did not substantiate injuries of such severity as to attract such a high award.”

When I read some of the comments under the story by some readers I was utterly shocked. Some folks were more interested in the lady’s hairdo, nails and the smartphone in her hand, more so than the blatant injustice meted out a fellow citizen. What a country? Country people say, “Tiday fi mi, tomorrow fi yuh”. Unless you are among the privileged one per cent, that adage applies to you.

I suspect that if she were shown eating out of a garbage pan, reduced to selling her body on ‘Back Road’ or New Kingston, or maybe using smoke signals instead of a phone, those circumstances would have focused the brains of the misdirected. Reid’s son needs glasses that will cost $17,000, but she cannot afford them. The story reports her saying: “I am now making a special appeal for the attorney general to take immediate steps to make some payment so I can purchase the glasses for my son,” she said amid tears.

“Reid says she suspects that it was the HIV medication she was wrongly treated with, nine years ago, that might have affected her baby, leaving the boy with no pupil in the left eye.”

What a disgrace! Government in this country seems increasingly like a tick on the backs of its citizens. Surely, the law allows for an interim payment to be made. I did some research and found out that some 140 people are awaiting payments from judgements awarded by the courts against the Government up to the end of January 2014. These judgements run into millions of dollars.

While I declare personal interest, I must ask the questions. Are these 140 — and now most likely many more Jamaican citizens — getting justice? Are their lives being balanced? Will they have a Merry Christmas this year? Will they be singing the refrain reference above this Yuletide season? Is this Government performing any of the core functions of a government adequately? And are the lives of the majority of Jamaicans better off economically and in any functional way compared to three years ago?

We will not tolerate their ineptitude, turn a blind eye to their failures, or ignore acts of terror. They will not be able to shirk their responsibility. — Dan Halutz

Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Comments to higgins160@yahoo.com