Earlier this month the Belize Medical and Dental Association called for government to take over 100% of Universal Health Services. That's done, but now after being included in a task force to advice on the merger/takeover - the Association has walked away from the table. On Friday of last week the task force met, and after the meeting, the President of the BMDU Dr. Marta Habet reported to the membership. That's where it was decided that they will no longer form a part of the task force. Today, we spoke with a member of the BMDU John Sosa who explained the reasons for the withdrawal.
Dr. John Sosa,
"That task force is basically dead because nothing has been done on Universal's part to give information to the task force as to decide on how best to use the services of Universal and KHMH. The people from the task force have gone to Universal to get that information and have been refused entry and have asked for it, I suppose from someone in authority at Universal, and have been refused that information as regards financials and as regards use of patient beds and costing of patient beds and costing of procedures and things like that. There is nothing for the task force to compare KHMH prices with Universal prices and so there is no where to and basically because of that, the President of the BMDA decided that we are wasting time here. Or rather she didn't decide that, but the members had told her that if we are wasting time, it is best we get out and she did that. We have decided that really it is the Cabinet that has made its up mind, we would think. The Minister of Health convened this task force, not the Cabinet and it is a Cabinet decision with regards Universal. So in our minds, the task force from the beginning was not really empowered to do what it should do and we believe it to have been just covering or just putting a face to something that would probably go through without taking into account anyone else. Maybe the task force was supposed to come up with something in the future, we doubt it very much. We don't see Universal giving any information and we don't see where in fact, if they give something, the two very different positions to be reconciled with a private institution and a public institution - it just doesn't seem to be possible in that sense. Things are happening behind the scenes that we don't know of. Things may have been sorted out, have been decided upon, that we don't know of and we are not really sure what is happening at this time. All we know for a fact is that the task force is going nowhere."
A release from the Belize Medical and Dental Association says "the task force seems to be a farce." It lists reasons for the withdrawal which includes a call on government to stop using public finances to bolster UHS, and asks that as many staff as possible from UHS be absorbed by the public service at the KHMH or other hospitals, and urges government to have an immediate audit of the among other requests.
