Saturday 25 March 2006 Free eye surgery in Venezuela and Cuba
CURACAO – The consul-general in Curaçao, Lorenzo Angiolillo announced that people of less resource can soon register for free eye operations in Venezuela or Cuba at the expense of the Venezuelan government.
The Venezuelan government takes care of also the airfare and accommodation and calls the mission a ‘Misión Milagro’ (operation miracle). “With this mission, the people profits for the first time from the petroleum industry”, says Angiolillo. The association of ophthalmologists in Curacao is really questioning this plan.
Starting May 15th, people can register for this free treatment at the consulate. The patients should have a first diagnose of the problem with their eyes. The decision will then be made whether the patient can be treated in Venezuela or should go to Cuba for a more specialized treatment. All the patient needs are 8 days off for the trip, surgery and recovery.
The patients will travel with Angiolillo in a presidential- or a military aircraft to the Military Hospital.
Mision Milagro is already in operation in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Uruguay and is taken to also Curacao on the initiative of the consul-general. According to Angiolillo, the program should be seen as an action in which, as part of the Latin-American integration policy, this possibility is offered to sister countries in the region.
The association of ophthalmologists in Curacao is warning everybody that is considering this offer. Ophthalmologist Victor Wiedijk reacted on behalf of the association that patients that want to become eligible for this operation abroad, whether on own expenses or not, need to realize that they do not know where the surgery will take place, who is going to do it, and do the surgeon in question have any qualifications or not.
Surgery done by a non-qualified surgeon, the use of obsolete equipment or catching multi-resistant hospital bacteria, can lead to serious consequences for the healthcare in the Antilles in general.
Almost everybody in the Antilles have some kind of medical insurance. Completely in line with the charter of the United Nations, which clearly states that each government is responsible for the healthcare of her nation, the Antilles have a taxation and premium system that allows every resident, including the unprivileged and illegal ones in the Antilles to have direct access to adequate medical care.
In consideration of this, the Neth.Antilles is way above all countries in the Caribbean, including Venezuela and even the developed countries like the Netherlands and the United States, said Wiedijk.
Wiedijk sees the Venezuelan plan as a worrisome development. Patients go on a regular basis abroad for surgery that qualitatively can be done better locally. “Sometimes people return to us with completely screwed up eyes and we cannot be responsible for what went wrong abroad and we cannot fix it either.”
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