Health provision lacking
HAVING quite properly devoted the whole of last week's column to the sombre events involving the deaths of retired carriage driver Ann Rive – whose funeral takes place in Sark at 1pm tomorrow – and Swiss tourist Dora Jufer, who died after a carriage overturned, this week I can catch up on other less sad news.
HAVING quite properly devoted the whole of last week's column to the sombre events involving the deaths of retired carriage driver Ann Rive – whose funeral takes place in Sark at 1pm tomorrow – and Swiss tourist Dora Jufer, who died after a carriage overturned, this week I can catch up on other less sad news.
Last month the Medical Committee held a couple of well-attended public meetings to discuss the increasing cost of private health insurance at which Dr Peter Counsell – what a wholly unnecessary loss to Sark he is going to be when he goes – gave residents a valuable insight into the various options again under discussion.
I am not going to dwell at length on what was discussed because the issue is bound to be revisited but a couple of points are worthy of dissemination to a wider audience.
According to my interpretation of statistics presented at the meeting, if Sark's resident population is 600 then more than 20 per cent – over 100 people – have no medical insurance at all. The figure is frightening and even more so is the suggestion put forward at the meeting I attended that somehow some of the uninsured are under the wholly mistaken impression that the island will foot the bill if they do need secondary medical care.
Unless they are in a category which can be helped by public funds, then nothing could be further from the truth – there is no provision whatsoever in ordinary circumstances for public funds to be so used and the sooner people understand this (perhaps through employers making it crystal clear to their staff), the fewer tears and big bills there'll be in the future.
The second point to emerge was the fact that despite Sark being part of the Bailiwick, the fees charged by the Guernsey health authorities are extremely high – much more, I'm told, than in other places – and if they were lowered to a more reasonable rate then health insurance premiums for Sark residents would be significantly lower.
Many people here, including me, get increasingly annoyed at those in Guernsey who treat Sark as some sort of rich cash cow, there for the milking, so to speak, without even bothering to acknowledge the enormous value of this small island to the overall Guernsey economy.
Virtually everything needed to sustain a community which attracts over 50,000 visitors a year is brought through Guernsey and shipped by a Guernsey company whose full-time staff are Guernsey people, as is the case with our suppliers, and is thus a significant contribution to the public purse.
Heaven knows, we get enough comment from Guernsey politicians when they're trying to divert attention from their island's problems so it would be nice if they actually did something useful for a place they all profess to love. No doubt Dave Jones will be dusting off his keyboard as he reads these words.
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Last weekend saw the third Sark Folk Festival – another brilliantly-organised, well-attended event of the sort Sark likes. Congratulations to everyone who attended and/or helped and roll on next year.
A final word on the carriage tragedy and I am told – by someone old enough to recall the incident itself – that the last occasion on which someone died in similar (although not identical) circumstances was in December 1933 when Clifford Philip Baker, aged 54, died a week after his horse bolted and he was thrown from his box cart. If nothing else, that demonstrates how thankfully infrequent such tragedies are.
l The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.
