On Wednesday, I went out to the mayor’s office to discuss public health matters on the island with Nora and Miss Peggy. As a politician, he was flawless. We got very little accomplished; throughout the meeting, I was squirming in the leather-bound sofa hoping that someone would get to the point. Politics is a terrible game to play for those who are dissatisfied with the status quo. I had passed out in boredom somewhere in the middle of the meeting, as I had realized the futility of discussing the importance of well-managed health care to a businessman, but as we exited the municipal building, I begun to think of this experience not as a failure, but as a lesson in perseverance and preparation.
Of course, there’s always the problem of whether or not we should go to the government for help. Being a gringo, I have no idea what the system is like down here, but a native doctor, who had worked for the municipality during his social service years, said that going to the government means that we would be government-owned, that they would have full control on our (the people’s) operations and management of the health care system. I heard that several months ago the mayor had cut the already-dwindling hospital budget in half, to a mere $500 a month (we don’t even have a defibrillator on the island!), while the police gets $1800 monthly for food only.
When we were done with meeting the mayor, Peggy seemed disgusted over his remark of her alleged partisanship. The previous mayor had provided Peggy with funding for Dr. Raymond’s salary. How temporal and situational political deals are, I thought. Now that the Liberals are out of power, donations alone pay for Raymond’s salary—and Peggy still owes him.
There is no other limiting factor to the establishment of the Peggy’s new clinic, complete with a birthing center, lab equipment, a community meeting room, a kitchen, an office for Raymond, and several treatment rooms, than that of money. I had decided to help Peggy with getting that so her clinic can be built. We have all the logistics ready—the floor plans for the clinic are complete, the construction workers are hired, the materials are waiting to be shipped. In addition to working on the waste disposal and infant monitoring project in Las Colonias, the diabetic and hypertensive education project in Flowers Bay, in working on RCPHI’s sustainability and communicability, in Peggy’s clinic as a pharmacy technician/janitor, as a personal secretary, day planner, and computer technician for Peggy’s life, I have started to write grant proposals and marketing/advertising schemes to help with the filling the $55,000 hole we need to insure adequate health provision on Roatan.
