The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. — Thomas Jefferson

“ESSENTIALLY, doctors working in the public health system told us what we have been hearing from their colleagues for months. There are no antibiotics, and patients have to be asked to buy their own and take them to the hospital, one surgeon at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) said. ‘Gowns are not appropriate for surgery as the plastic aprons do not cover anything,’ he added.

“There’s one CT machine at Kingston Public Hospital, and when it goes down the hospital is left with a big backlog of patients. The situation at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) is no better, we are told, as that institution is lacking supplies of drugs and other equipment necessary to treat people with a range of illnesses or to examine them to determine what is wrong with them. One doctor working at the Mandeville Regional Hospital told us, as well, that basic supplies are often out of stock there, and, to make matters worse, the hospital has a shortage of beds.

“The Port Antonio Hospital is said to be out of contraceptives given to low-income or unemployed mothers to prevent more unwanted babies.” — Editorial, Daily Observer, Tuesday, January 6, 2014

This is happening in an Administration that found millions to buy spanking new SUVs for themselves, $180 million in the NHT/Outameni scandal to seemingly bail out a friend, and $50 million to splurge on Independence celebrations. Simultaneously, garbage is not being collected on a timely basis in numerous communities across the country and public infrastructure is ‘balanced’ on a ripe banana peel.

To say that the greater core of the social fabric of this country is being ripped to shreds under this inept Government is an understatement. The priorities of this regime are pinnacled upon personal/reciprocal friendships and, most importantly, umbilical loyalty to party. Indeed, these are the hallmarks of most PNP Administrations [except for Norman Manley’s]. A front page story in The Gleaner of Tuesday, February 9, 2002 is testimony to the fact that most PNP Administrations have been characterised by scandals, ineptitude and a cruel waste of public resources; the results of which have chronically impoverished Jamaica. The Gleaner listed the cost of major money scandals:

“Shell Waiver (1991) $29.5 million

Zinc (1989) $500 million

Furniture (1991) $10.6 million

Public sector salaries (1998) $60 million

NetServ (2001) $220 million

Operation Pride/NHDC (1997-present) $5.5 billion projected”

TOTAL= $6.320 billion

In an unsurprising resemblance to chairman of the PNP, Robert Pickersgill’s — a political Stegosaurus [a dinosaur with a big body and small brain, that lived 150 million years ago] — ‘articulate minority’ snubbing of Jamaicans, in relation to the NHT-Outameni scandal, the same story quoted the then PNP general secretary, Maxine Henry-Wilson, saying: “In terms of the electorate, the average person does not even know about these things. She referred to a recent opinion poll which revealed that most Jamaicans were not aware of the NetServ scandal which broke late last year.”

It is clear that almost every time a PNP Administration is elected, the country goes on economic and social rewind. The same results inevitably follow, as is now exemplified in the chaos that again has descended upon the country.

While Dr Peter Phillips is attending to the fiscal side of the country’s finances and passing IMF tests by bulldozing the capital side of the budget, ordinary citizens are fetching hell, evident in their inability to meet obligations such as paying their rent, mortgages, loans, buy food, medicines, pay bus fare, and plan for any kind of sustainable social and financial future. Add to those daily realities, massive unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people ages 18-35, and even a basic abacus will show that the 1970s are here again.

Dr Phillips, a ‘trying man’ — I give him that — does not seem to realise that, four years on, his approach to managing our national thread bag is akin to a car with a carburettor which desperately needs to switch to fuel injection.

The country is on rewind.

Four years into this Administration, cumulative growth is barely over two per cent. A statistical error, some might say, and others like Barack Obama, in a Newsweek magazine, [and I agree] categorised ‘economic growth’ which has no correlation to peoples’ pockets and daily lives as just “numbers/stats on a page”. Contrast that reality with the fact that there are only two periods in Jamaica’s 52-year history since Independence that we achieved consistent growth of over 6 per cent: the 1960s and 1986-1990, both inspired by the pragmatic economic policies of the JLP.

In 1971, the Jamaican economy grew by almost 12 per cent. This was equivalent to the cumulative growth under Dr Omar Davies’ [the scorched-earth economics guru] entire 14 years as minister of finance — between 1993 and 2007. The positive growth achieved under the PNP in 1972 and 1973, and in 1989 and 1990, were residues inherited from the JLP. The evidence supports the fact that after each transitional year from one government to the next, the Jamaica economy descended into economic penury.

Why does the PNP win more elections than the JLP, becomes an obvious question. Simply, the PNP spends more time strategising how to obtain and keep State power by almost any means necessary, and less time, far less time on how to operationalise good governance to enable the majority of Jamaicans to pursue happiness — the core function of good government, according to Thomas Jefferson.

Remember Robert Pickersgill’s statement: “We believe it is best for the PNP to form the government, therefore, anything that will lead us or cause us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.” Jamaica is now undergoing an opportunity drought, worse than the physical drought that eased a couple of months ago.

The country is in repeat/rewind mode.

As a citizen, I am terrified when the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), as it did last Tuesday, describes the state of the local health sector as “a national emergency”. Their release, as printed in the Jamaica Observer, does not inspire confidence irrespective of the recent positive ranking of Jamaica at 64 of 146 countries (best place to do business in the Caribbean and Latin American), by Forbes magazine.

Against recent revelations by this newspaper, the MAJ noted: “It remains extremely concerned with these reports on the state of the country’s public hospitals.” Recent exposure of sub-standard conditions at Victoria Jubilee and Bellevue — the largest maternity and mental health hospitals in the region — are still ringing in my consciousness. We ordinary Jamaicans have to use these facilities. We cannot afford to fly out to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami or to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, or even the Tony Thwaites Wing at the University Hospital of the West Indies or Andrews Memorial. Since we ordinary Jamaicans, not the privileged one per cent, and those of the establishment pay the lion’s share of the taxes that ‘run’ this country, we must demand better.

Jamaica is on rewind.

How do we stop this? I suggest, as a start, that this moribund Administration takes a leaf from the playbook of one of the most decent politicians this country and the Caribbean has to date produced, Norman Manley. Father Manley, a man of great scruples, realised that Jamaica was at a political crossroads with regards to the Federation issue. While he did not have to, he enabled the Jamaican people to make a decision as to how their political future was to be fashioned beyond his generation. On September 19, 1961, Jamaicans voted on the question, “Should Jamaica remain in the West Indies Federation?” The JLP supported withdrawal and the PNP supported membership. Some 45.9 per cent voted “yes”, but 40,000 more voted “no” with 62 per cent of the electorate voting. [Some stats from the ECJ]

Today, Jamaica needs to make a crucial decision as to how our economic future will be fashioned. Like Manley did, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller should crank up the necessary machinery so that we can decide our economic path for now and generations beyond, plus other critical social/legal issues that include repeal/retention of the buggery law, legalisation of ganja, compulsory voting, and the matter of the Caribbean Court of Justice becoming Jamaica’s final appellate court.

Jamaica cannot continue in repeat mode. We need to have the most reassuring plebiscite that characterises the core of liberal democratic systems. We need a general election as soon as the EOJ can make the necessary arrangements. The recent Don Anderson polls show that most Jamaicans support local and general elections being held together. This confirms something known for years, and I support it. It would make eminent economic sense to heed public sentiment.

Jamaica’s broken social, economic and political clock is on rewind, and we need to decide the best horologist to assist us in fixing it. Our present watchmaker has failed miserably. Were we to have a general election now, whatever the verdict of the people, we must live with the consequences.

Professor Louis Grant — A citizen, gentleman,

and intellectual

In the vein of Normal Manley, Professor Louis Grant (1993) was an outstanding citizen. A microbiologist and pathologist, Prof Louis Grant was affiliated with the University of the West Indies, Mona, for 20 years, where he was named professor in microbiology.

Young Louis Grant was surrounded by science from an early age. Born in Vere, Clarendon, in 1913, his father worked in a chemical laboratory at the Appleton Estate. As a student, Grant showed promise and received the Vere Trust scholarship to attend Jamaica College. He went on to Edinburgh University in Scotland and later specialised in tropical microbiology at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Prof Grant then returned to Jamaica to serve his country as a medical doctor, microbiologist and pathologist.

In the 1940s he dreamed of a Jamaica with less disease and he decided to focus on a disease then plaguing the island — tuberculosis. He asked the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF for a grant to begin an inoculation campaign amongst Jamaican children. Joined by Dr Ronald Lampart, Grant completed a mass vaccination campaign that is credited with helping to break the cycle of infection and halt the spread of the dreaded disease.

During the decade of the 1960s, three diseases came to his attention. Two affected the island’s general population and one its equine population.

In the early 1960s many Jamaicans began to fall ill with severe fevers. Some, who seemed otherwise healthy, soon died. Through intensive research Dr Grant discovered that this disease was spread through contact with the urine of infected animals. Rats were immune to it and therefore major carriers of the virus. Dr Grant deduced that rats tend to urinate after eating in kitchens and this way people would consume food on which rats might have already urinated. The leptospirosis virus, if not rejected by the body immediately on contact, would then enter the bloodstream, multiply and possibly lead to death. Grant quickly spread the word, cautioning against rats entering kitchens and the danger of leaving food exposed. This public education campaign helped contain the spread of the disease, outbreaks of which have since been controlled.

In the late 1960s Jamaicans began to suffer from a strange fever. Dr Grant identified it as the dengue virus and concluded, after much research, that it was transmitted via the Aedes aegypti mosquito — the same mosquito that carries the deadly yellow fever virus. This led to another public education campaign and the beginning of a research effort on the study of arboviruses (viruses spread by blood-sucking insects) at UWI.

In the mid-1960s, reports of a disease afflicting horses on the eastern side of the island began to surface. Grant instituted quarantine on the movement of horses, donkeys and mules from that region. After much laboratory investigation he discovered that the horses were suffering from a virus known as equine encephalitis, which could not be spread to humans but could cause great damage to Jamaica’s horse population. He recommended further measures for containment, thereby preventing the spread of the virus and the ruination of Jamaica’s billion-dollar horse industry. He also acquired a new title, the horse saviour.

Grant’s life’s work deserves greater recognition.

NB: Full credit to research done by Dr Rebecca Tortello for the information on Professor Louis Grant

Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with. — Brodi Ashton

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