The alleged misbehaviour by patients referred abroad (see Wednesday paper) is a serious issue. For starters, it’s embarrassing and gives a bad impression of “The Friendly Island.”
More important, these are medical trips out of necessity, often quite urgent in nature. The interests in question that can include life-and-death scenarios are certainly nothing to play with.
SZV even having to draft a conduct policy for its clients and their companions indicates this was not just an isolated incident. While it is understandable that the persons concerned might be under a lot of stress, abusing hotel staff and damaging property are clearly inexcusable.
It cannot be so either that Government and SZV go to great lengths to obtain quality affordable health care in other nations regarding services that aren’t provided locally, only for a few to jeopardise these efforts for all others. Ultimately, those involved should be held accountable for their actions.
The latter also goes for misuse of daily allowances reported on in the same edition. People simply need to be responsible enough to spend the funds entrusted to them as intended for their own good, so they don’t run into money problems.
Perhaps many don’t realise how relatively privileged St. Maarten is with a collective insurance that includes almost automatically sending persons elsewhere for treatment they can’t get on the island. In several countries within the region that is not such a foregone conclusion.
