Minister Tabuya, when was the last time you visited CWM Hospital? Not for any handover of anything. Just because.
Are you saying the lift broke down once? At 2.30am, was fixed by end of day, and that was the story? Because that is what it sounds like. And if that is your understanding of the situation, then you are not across the facts.
That lift has broken down repeatedly. Over and over again. This was not a one-off incident that was unfairly reported. This has been an ongoing, chronic failure that affected real people every single time it happened. It is not mal-information to report that!! It is the truth and the full truth!! Not the version that is convenient for you or the Ministry of Health.
Imagine mums and dads. Grandparents. Admitting their sick children to the CWM Children's Ward over the last 8+ years. Lugging all their bags, their belongings, everything up the stairs because there was no working lift. I shouted about it. I screamed about it. And everyone else should have. It took so much time and energy to get the children's lift installed. And I really do not care one bit who looked bad in the process. Our children, their parents, their families and our doctors needed that lift. That's all that mattered.
Should we not talk about the mould in the ceilings? The leaks in all those buildings? Broken taps. Missing louvres. Toilets not working. Shortage of medicines, consumables and basic equipment?
I invite you. I invite the Minister for Health. I invite the whole Ministry team and everyone in Parliament. Visit. Use that lift. Walk the corridors. Look up at the ceilings. Look at the floors, look at the spaces, look in the bathrooms.
And while you're there, please sit in the emergency department. Because I have.
A few weeks ago I made 23 telephone calls on the evening of the medical emergency at the GPH. As I was on the phone, you walked past me and asked, "Miss CWM are you calling for an ambulance?" to that effect anyway, as though caring about our hospitals is something to mock! Yes, I was speaking with a doctor at the time, and I was on the phone trying desperately to get help!!
That evening, I sat in the emergency room and watched our incredible doctors and nurses fight to resuscitate two patients while dragging a single vital signs monitor back and forth between two beds. I found out last week that our Emergency Department has 3 vital signs monitors! Three. For approximately 20 beds. Did you know that EVERY bed should have its own monitor in our ED?
Sadly, both patients passed away. In front of me and others.
Did you know that our Intensive Care Unit (ICU) does not have a working transport ventilator? A transport ventilator exists so that when a critically ill patient needs to be moved to surgery or another ward, they remain on mechanical support the entire time. Without one, doctors have no choice but to manually bag them. By hand. And when THAT lift isn't working? Those same doctors are manually bagging critically ill patients while carrying them up the stairs to surgery.
I am telling you this now because maybe nobody wanted to say it out loud in case it made the Ministry look bad.
So don't talk about context.
Go to the maternity ward. See mothers on beds so small they are terrified of rolling onto their newborns because there are hardly enough (or any) cots or bassinets. Ask why pap smear screening isn't happening right now? Ask what's missing.
Watch nurses on 12-hour shifts. Ask the doctors doing 24-hour on-call how they're holding up.
Then come back and tell us you're more concerned about the Ministry "looking bad."
How anyone looks is the least of my problems. Because while it seems you are worried about your image and that of the Ministry of Health, people are suffering in conditions that could be improved. You are more concerned with how the Ministry looks than with the changes that could be made for the benefit of other human beings?
Most of the staff inside those walls work themselves to exhaustion every single day compensating for failures that are not of their making. They deserve better. The patients deserve better. Every Fijian deserves better.
Do not threaten journalists. Do not threaten citizens for speaking their truth. Because from where I sit, that is exactly what this is, a warning to stay silent. That is not going to happen.