A recent visit to Barbados in January 2020 was an interesting research opportunity to look at the health care system operating.
All Barbadian citizens are covered by Universal Health Care.
Barbados has eight polyclinics throughout the country providing FREE!!, 5 hospitals specifically for care of the elderly, and a network of child care facilities.
The main Queen Elizabeth Hospital is located in Bridgetown and has 500 beds.
This model services a population of 275,000 people on an island 21 x14 miles.
What was particularly interesting for me was the ongoing promotion of Health and Well Being through circulating magazines and even yellow pages.!!!
Every opportunity was taken to exploit heath education. And encouragement of self help and personal responsibility of health and well being.
What sprung to my mind immediately was this was a small island with limited physical space so a suitable “system” for balancing ill health and was imperative
It could be argued that being so close to the equator the citizens had all the benefits of the sun, however the “common sense” approach to balanced ill health and health and well- being was very interesting.
Also very interesting was there were available specific “care for the elderly” facilities, which would then free up the main hospital for turn round health care.
The island was clean and simple with a proud historic reputation of sugar cane being the main industry (interestingly sugary foods were few and far between).
Fish, chicken and rice was high on the food agenda…. The island is famous for flying fish..
Very interesting assignment ….. sometimes small islands produce great yields with Health and Well Being…
