Victoria Hospital

the Ministry of the Public Service and our current head is the Ministry of Health. But OKEU Hospital is now under a Board of Directors, which makes it a statutory institution.” BVC: What do you believe are the biggest challenges for healthcare in St. Lucia? Calixte: When it comes to the health sector in St. Lucia, we have different challenges. One of the main ones being human resources. Right now, we’re losing our experienced staff to other bigger countries, where the pastures appear to be greener. So, we constantly have to train new staff to keep our health system going.We also need, not only enough human resources, but the financial resources to allow us to open some of the facilities for longer hours. If we had more resources, we wouldn’t be having so many people with chronic, non-communicable diseases coming to the upper levels of care. “But we have to look at some of our restraints, like equipment. Right now on the island, we have one CT scan that is functioning and that is at a private hospital, which means a patient has to make an appointment to go there and pay $1,250 for a CT scan. MRIs are not done in St. Lucia, they have to be done on our neighboring island of Martinique. So, these are all major challenges for us: human resources is an issue, finance is an issue, and we don’t have the equipment we need to give an upper level of care to our patients.” Sister Adesanya: “Another challenge we have is with members of the public.We don’t have that many persons who can actually pay for some of the services we have. They have financial constraints when it comes to that. In Victoria Hospital, we do not turn away patients, even though you come to the hospital and can’t afford to pay. Everybody is treated, even tourists and VICTORIA HOSPITAL Atwell Dalgliesh Co. (St. Lucia) Ltd. Since 1974, Atwell Dalgliesh Co. (St.Lucia) Ltd. has operated as a wholesale and retail business. Our product lines range from hair care products to hardware, disposable restaurant & hotel supplies and much more. Food Service Supples • Hair Care Products • Electrical Supplies Janitorial & Sanitation Supplies • Plumbing Supplies La Pansee Road, P.O. Box 732, Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies Tel: 1-758-452-3668 • www.atwelldalgliesh.com people that aren’t from St. Lucia.” BVC: What do you envision lies ahead as the OKEU Hospital becomes a reality? Calixte: “Since we’ll have equipment that we don’t have in our present structure, I foresee so much more being done, including medical tourism.We have neighboring islands such as Dominica, Grenada, and St. Vincent, whose people might want to come across to St. Lucia to get some of the procedures done. That, we could not have done before. “Also, I see opportunity for longer hours of service –persons may want to open the operating theater longer, giving operating theater rights to other physicians in the private PREFERRED VENDOR n Atwell Dalgliesh (St. Lucia) Ltd. www.atwelldalgliesh.com sector. That would be a form of us getting money. We’ll be able to offer other services that are now done privately, such as rheumatology clinics.When we have more staff on, we can open to the private sector, letting them come in and use our resources to provide healthcare to the public of St. Lucia and people coming in from the other islands for medical reasons. “Victoria Hospital has served the island well for over 150 years and is now moving into a state-of-the-art healthcare facility. Yes, we are overwhelmed with the transitioning, but we are also extremely excited and have great expectations for the future of healthcare on St. Lucia.”