The picture of ketch ass!

See Guardian 2010-02-14 for write up and comments on dee the picture below.

I's a picture of ketchass - in local terminology! Dat is exactly what it is. From bed shortage to doctor shortage - dey kicksin' (as dey used to say long time) wid dee health survice.

I t'ink dee regime dong dey have some special kindah equipment to addle people brain into believin' dat ketchass-care equates to first world care.

On 26th May 2007 Dr Petronella Manning-Allyene was quoted in the press as saying that "The medical system is what I gloriously call ‘catch ass medicine’ and I am always at pains to explain to my juniors that when you go abroad you will not see this ... but we have to function and find ways and means of surviving.” You will not be surprised to learn that those words, including the article that contained them, have been totally expunged from all web-versions of the T&T newspapers (whilst leaving in place other web-versions of newspaper articles from the beginning of 2007).  In other words the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has been 'erased'! Could that be by the hand of 'God'?

But two things remain:

1) A copy of  the article containing Petronella Manning-Allyenes words in my hands, and

2) Reality!!

The reality is that successive regimes have in dee local parlance 'played dee ass' with health care for the last 40 years. Those who suffer the most watch on as the rich and 'infamous' jet off to first world nations to get dey 'glorious' check-ups - while poor people have tuh ketch ass, in occasionally maggot infested rooms and what by any measure is fourth-world health care.

I pity Dr Chattergoon when he said "They are going to get beds. As fast as patients get discharged, they will get beds. Right now there are some empty beds on Ward Two and some of them will be sent there. We are working on it." What else can we expect him to say. In fact I could have said the same thing from thousands of miles away. It makes no difference really. Dis ketchass about beds is not a problem that suddenly leapt out of dee forest. With the distasteful sacking of Dr Stephen Ramroop, you can bet that Dr Chattergoon having been seen by many as an unsilenceable Rottweiler in the past, is now properly chained and muzzled, except at brief intervals when he is not being lovingly fed and watered by his political masters. No  - I don't think he will snap at their hands.