With the opening of the new Peebles Hospital and the planned implementation of National Health Insurance on the horizon, Virgin Islands officials have had a lot to say lately about modernising the territory’s health care system.
Better resources would certainly be welcome, but without appropriate regulations and, perhaps more importantly, without a population that holds medical officers accountable to their standards, “there will continue to be gaps, and things will fall into those gaps,” said Vessilie Mathavious.
Ms. Mathavious, a retired nurse, gave a talk called “Mind the Gaps: Governance, Execution and Accountability in Health Services” on Thursday evening. The talk was this year’s Frederick Pickering Memorial Lecture, which took place at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College.
Ms. Mathavious said that she hopes that more citizens will think of Peebles Hospital as “the people’s hospital,” and fight to make sure that it meets the needs of Virgin Islanders. She also said she hopes that as the hospital grows, top-tier officials make an effort to promote Virgin Islanders into leadership roles.
“When you recruit from outside for your leadership roles, you separate from knowledge of the country’s history, from institutional knowledge,” she said, adding that once lost, such knowledge is difficult to rebuild.
See the Feb. 5, 2015 edition for full coverage.