St Philip North MP and general practitioner Dr Sonia Browne on Tuesday called for some returning nationals to pay for medication at public polyclinics, arguing that citizens who had not paid into the system while not living here should help ease the growing burden on state-funded healthcare.
Dr Browne said: “I think it’s time that others who come in from outside are asked to contribute a little bit.
“There are many people who enter the polyclinic for medication, a lot of returning nationals that get their pensions from overseas. Never contributed to our system. Never paid [national insurance] in our system, but are happy to sit down with a book in the polyclinics for hours to get free medication that somebody else pays for. I think it is time, as I said with exceptions, that some of these individuals are required to contribute to the cost of drugs. It is only fair.
“Hundreds of people visit the polyclinic on a daily basis. It will lend to the burden of the cost of medication. The cost can go to some other part of medicine. But I think it is about time that we have a look at that or re-look at it.”
As she spoke on the Barbados Medical Products Bill in the House of Assembly, she claimed instances where individuals bought cheaper drugs here and sold them in other countries at a profit, and expressed her hope that the legislation would put an end to this.
“I am hoping to see a crackdown on these things,” she said.
Browne also urged the Barbados Medical Products Regulatory Authority, to be created under the bill, to address the sale of some medications with little information on their packaging.
“I saw a patient recently with an energy capsule. He came in with palpitations, near heart attack. There was nothing written on it, but you see the products on it and if you do not look it up you would not know that these would cause these things. These are the things that I am hoping that the authority would regulate.”
Dr Browne also paid tribute to friend Janette Jan Lynton, founder of the Cancer Support Services, who died on Monday night.
She hailed Lynton for a pivotal role in assisting cancer patients, supporting the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with the provision of various items, and sponsoring a room where patients receiving radiotherapy for thyroid disease could be treated.
“There are many families that would love me to say thank you to her for the aid she gave their relatives on their dying beds. She had an interesting holistic approach to the treatment of cancer patients, whether it be psychological, medical, seeing that they had the monies to to buy drugs. She played a part in my education and several of the medical fraternity in terms of the same cancer treatment. Every year we had seminars to educate not only the medical fraternity, but patients and family members of those patients. I hope and pray that her legacy lives on.”
(JB)
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