The Editor, Sir:

I was watching the debate between Senator Peter Phillips and Dr. Baugh. My main purpose was to listen for key issues and how they were going to be dealt with. I needed to hear in particular about solutions for crime and violence and health care. In the process, I got hurt and my old wound was reopened.

I was very distraught when the issue of hospital closure was brought up, because my people have been suffering for over 12 years because some very smart politicians decided to close the doors of the hospital that their lives so heavily depended on. When the Ulster Spring Hospital in South Trelawny was closed, many lives closed along with it, and are still to this day closing because the nearest hospital is two hours away, be it Spaulding, Mandeville or Falmouth. Imagine that.

One hospital in a parish is ridiculous in modern days. It is as if you have taken my parish off the map, you just say to yourselves "oh that's bush, we have no time for the bush", so you just turn your backs. We boast of our progress in housing and education, yet the country's most important resources are dying from a lack of proper health care. It therefore means that it is our duppies who will educate themselves and buy the houses because pretty soon, we will all be dead.

The people in South Trelawny need the hospital back. Rebuild it or reopen it. The lives of the people were centred around it; they had jobs, good health care and a community that was thriving because of it. When you closed its doors, you closed the community down. Whichever party wins the election needs to reform health care. If your people are ill, the country is ill. If your people are well, then the country will do well. Open up the hospitals, people will get jobs, hands will be busy, not idle, so there will be no time to steal and kill.

Think about it, how many of you politicians live in an area where the nearest hospital is two hours away?

I am, etc.,

MICHELLE

ELLIOTT-SMITH

Kingston 3

Via Go-Jamaica

michieboo32@yahoo.com