Dear Editor,
Ever so often, you will encounter a PNC apologist who vainly tries to rewrite history. I recently encountered one. They come up with these jocular theories, hoping to find some relevance among educated people, but it will not work.
One Mr Moseley wrote that beriberi existed long before the PNC came to power. In essence, he was saying that Burnham should not be blamed for an upsurge of this disease during his time in power here. That writer meant to absolve Burnham from any problems this country suffered as a result of the breakdown of the healthcare system around that period.
Beriberi is a deficiency disease just like any other deficiency disease; it shows up when a country is being impoverished. Burnham pauperised Guyana with his blatant corruption and corrupt rule; as a consequence, this disease saw a significant rise in its occurrence.
A major cause for a lack of Thiamine 1 taking root here was due to the banning of certain basic food items, and the failure to source same from local foods. It was a hellish time for nursing mothers and the young infants in their care. To agree with Moseley’s theory is like saying that Good Friday falls on a Wednesday, something that defies intelligence.
So, Moseley was just fooling himself, while at the same time trying to clean up after Burnham.
no one can deny that the root cause for an upsurge in the disease was squarely pegged at Burnham’s gross mismanagement of the economy and a near-total breakdown of the primary healthcare system. The two things are intricately woven.
The point I am making is that trying to wipe out of our minds the horrible experiences we had during those 28 years of Burnham’s reign would not work. The writer of that article was only exposing his ineptitude and stupidity, and this is very embarrassing, to say the least.
Respectfully,
Neil Adams
