By: Staff Writer
July 27, 2021
In a blistering attack over the weekend an activist turned independent politician has slammed the government on its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as waves of people spill out of the hospital, calling prime minister Dr Hubert Minnis “garbage juice” for his failure to protect citizens of The Bahamas and provide for adequate care for the sick.
Lincoln Bain, activist and now independent candidate for the Pinewood constituency in the up-coming Bahamas general election, in a blistering attack on prime minister Dr Hubert Minnis on social media has said that the people spilling out of the hospital into the corridors outside of the hospital in the midst of a fourth wave of the COVID-19 in the country is unacceptable and called prime minister Minnis “the worst prime minister in Bahamian history” as he further called for him to go.
Mr Bain also said Dr Minnis was “garbage” and “garbage juice” for allowing the sick to go unattended to in the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), considering that Dr Minnis himself is a doctor having worked in the very same hospital and knows the challenges that the PMH faces and has done nothing to change the working conditions or the environs of the hospital while he was the minister for health during the former Ingraham administration of 2008-2012.
The Public Hospitals authority has addressed this video of people spilling out of the PMH awaiting treatment for COVID-19 symptoms as something that was planned as said it has “maintained for several weeks” the PMH has reached its capacity for COVID-19 patients.
They also said that the video circulating on social media and posted here is of the Critical Care Block Food Court and its exterior porch was designated for COVID-19 intake and triage since March, 2020 and this is nothing new. In light of the pouring rain over the weekend the triage centre was relocated from the West Porch area to the North Porch as “temporary shelter” due to the inclement weather.
Just recently, the government of The Bahamas signed a $90m contract with the Beck Group out of Atlanta, Georgia US for the expansion of the PMH and the Rand Memorial hospital in Grand Bahama.
Bain, however, further challenged the government to do better by the nurses at PMH who have walked off of the job as a result of the terrible working conditions made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. He also said to nurses not to put their lives at risk for this government who is not doing their job.
Nurses at PMH have been perpetually complaining about the working conditions prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic. Additionally, more than half of medical staff are still not fully vaccinated. As of May, only 45.5 percent of “healthcare workers” are fully vaccinated and some are saying to not force them to take the vaccination.
To add to the misery of it all, the morgue is over 100 percent filled. As of this past weekend, the morgue at the PMH has the capacity for 73 bodies but now has 225 bodies that need to be collected by family members as the bodies pile up due to the worsening conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic according to the minister for health, Renward Wells.
The Bahamas is a long way from overcoming the hump of COVID-19 much like all other countries around the world dealing with this pandemic. The only way out, some say, is through mass vaccinations, which Bahamians are hesitant towards in addition to the government having run out of Oxford/AstraZeneca shots that were given to them by the COVAX initiative of the World Health Organisation. More vaccines are in the country now and more are expected on the way by the end of August with the help of the US government’s Pfizer initiative.