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Advocates demand to see BHB report

Mark Selley

Repeated delays into the release of a Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) review are arousing the suspicions of healthcare advocates.No release date had been given for the governance report into the BHB, handed in to the Board last month by consultants Howard Associates.Bermuda Healthcare Advocacy Group (BHAG) chairman Mark Selley said Ombudsman Arlene Brock’s review of the report was to go before Parliament on May 17, when the House of Assembly reconvenes.But his group wants a chance to look at the full document.Mr Selley said: “We were supposed to get this report in March, then in April, now it’s May. This is where I’m suspicious of their intentions of releasing the report as it was written. We need it as a working document.“The funny thing is, this review is on the old Board and the old way the hospital was run. I don’t see why the new Board feels so intimidated.”According to a BHB spokeswoman, the report is currently under review by the BHB.Mr Selley conceded that BHB had taken steps toward greater transparency, telling The Royal Gazette he’d been appointed to a BHB committee of stakeholders on April 9.“I’m glad I was appointed, although it seems to me all they can think of doing is publicity to pay for the Acute Care Wing.”He said he plans to attend a May 13 meeting of the committee — although, with BHAG’s long history of challenging BHB, he added: “It’ll be strange for me, and it must be even stranger for them.”The group met last night to highlight the ongoing case of Allan DeSilva, whose wife Sylvia died following treatment overseas and at King Edward VII Memorial. BHAG has been demanding a full medical autopsy of Ms DeSilva and claims KEMH has not been co-operative in sending tissue slides overseas for examination.“The hospital has been more forthcoming, but we’ve still had months go by and nothing happening,” Mr Selley said. “All this time we’ve been calling for a Commission of Inquiry into the BHB, which we’ve had to hold off on because of this report.“Now it’s finished, completed and presented, and the report still hasn’t come out. What’s the hold-up?”