Business View Caribbean | Jan 2019

77 “The new facility will allow us to do much more and provide better services to the public of St. Lucia. In addition, Victoria Hospital is more than a century old and really falling apart. The OKEU Hospital has the space to function at the standard required to allow our processes to take place. Basically, it’s a safer, more comfortable space for patients and staff. It will be state-of-the-art with better technology and more equipment. “Initially, everything for the new hospital was EU funded, in terms of the equipment and the building structure.When we begin operating, the government will take over budgeting for everything for the hospital under the new governance. At Victoria Hospital, we are under 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