The Tribune

PERHAPS we are too eager for good news – but any hopes we might have emerged from the third wave of COVID-19 affecting our country are perhaps premature.

Dr Nikkiah Forbes is the country’s top infectious disease expert – and has been a sound and steady voice throughout this pandemic.

The good news, she says, is that there has been a slight decline in cases of the past three weeks. The bad news is that it is only a slight decline.

“We still have to watch,” she says, “and we can’t say (we are emerging from the third wave) definitively at this point.”

For now, the difficulties we face as a country continue – while the number of patients in the healthcare system poses even more difficulties. Not every bed is full, which is good, but the numbers are still high compared to the total number of healthcare workers.

In short, we must not get ahead of ourselves. But there is more good news to be had. Those numbers are indeed dropping a little – which means what we are doing is working. We have to keep going with social distancing and wearing masks, washing regularly and using sanitiser. Simple steps, we all know them by now.

The vaccination programme, too, can make a difference. As Dr Forbes says, “There’s vaccinations now and that can help to reduce the number of cases if you were to have a robust effective vaccination programme.”

That’s part of the picture – but we still need more vaccines, and more people need to come forward and get their jabs.

It has been a long, hard journey to get to where we are, but the progress that has been made will be wasted if we don’t see it through.

If we do that, then maybe in the next week or two we really will be able to say that the third wave is a thing of the past. And if we can say that, then maybe we can save lives.

Island healthcare

There is a conundrum in our public health infrastructure – and it’s not one we talk about often.

Dr Duane Sands, the former Health Minister, has pointed out the cost of community clinics and highlighted how we are always “playing catch up” with infrastructure needs.

There is an expectation that Family Island medical services will match those that can be found in Nassau. To some extent, that is of course an impracticality – merely by the number of different clinics and specialists that can be found on the larger island of New Providence compared to a small island where there might be only a few health experts.

Part of it is politics. It’s a powerful promise to entice people to vote for your party if you say we’ll give you a clinic right on your doorstep so if you need it, you don’t have to go to Nassau.

Dr Sands points out there are around 100 clinics around The Bahamas, with changing codes of what is standard – and even one in a condemned building.

It’s not just the buildings, it’s the staffing too, making sure there are doctors and nurses in those clinics to deal with people’s needs.

It’s not an easy conundrum to solve, especially given the political dimension – but are there other ways we can deal with some of the issues. Take a look at Australia, for example, where scattered small communities are dealt with by the Flying Doctor service. That’s not cheap either, costing around $85m a year, but it might even ensure medics with greater expertise available to fly to a scene rather than those who might be in a clinic but lack certain specialities.

What matters, in the end, is the outcome. We want people to have the best medical care possible. That might not be the same thing as our current solution – and perhaps we should think a little more out of the box, and certainly beyond the ballot box.