Re Lucille Charlebois-LaPlante’s opinion nonsense and the health board’s pathetic response.
    I am appalled and dismayed. Are you not contemplating commerce wth the devil here? Cubans, in case you have forgotten the Bay of Pigs, are COMMUNISTS! United States Citizens are forbidden to trade with Cuba. There is a reason for that. We’ve got to halt the spread of COMMUNISIM.
    Have you no love for your country? For Democracy? Next you’ll suggest we ask Osama Bin Laden for advice on how to halt the spread of terrorism. May God have mercy on your souls.

Geena McCoy Rawlins

    Wilbur County Board of Health’s regular monthly meeting convened at the courthouse Tuesday evening. Items on the agenda included emergency preparedness in the event of a biological attack and the progress of physician recruitment efforts.
    Matt Thompson, Board Chair, asked fellow board members, Albert Arlington and Truman Hedrick, “Will Germaine die for lack of a doctor?”
    â€œLittle Germaine Van Bibber did,” Arlington responded and was met by groans from the rest of the board and the small group of public attendees, which included Lucille Charlebois-LaPlante whose outspoken support of Cuban medicine was featured on the op/ed page of the Truth last week.
    Thompson admitted that the board had no encouraging news to report vis a vis recruitment. “We haven’t had a single response to those ads in the medical journals. No graduating medical student or practicing doctor looking for a change of scenery has taken the bait.”
    The chair went on to say that the Rural Area Medical Committee (RAMC) also has drawn blanks. He accompanied RAMC to three teaching hospitals in order to appeal to interns. He expressed his discouragement. “It is as if we were lepers or worse, simply invisible,too insignificant to consider.”
    Charlebois-LaPlante broke the silence that followed Thompson’s comment, “I think it is time to consider the Cuban alternative. And I will gladly volunteer to followup by inviting a member of the Cuban medical community to visit Germaine and discuss the matter further.”
    After a short debate, the board agreed to give Charlebois-LaPlante permission to act on the board’s behalf in contacting and extending an invitation as she had volunteered to do.
    Emergency preparedness was tabled for the third consecutive meeting. Board members vowed to address it at the next meeting which will be held as usual on the third Tuesday of the month at the Wilbur County Courthouse at 7:00 pm. The public is welcome to all Wilbur County Board of Health meetings.

by Lucy Charlebois-LaPlante
    Germaine and all of Wilbur County have been without a single fulltime physician since Doc Barlow died five years ago. In that time we have had a number of deaths that might hae been prevented with the early intervention of trained medical personnel. Most everyone in Germaine and surrounding Wilbur County are very well aware of this state of affairs.
    I know that the Wilbur County Board of Health has been actively trying to recruit doctors and nurse practitioners. The Wednesday clinic is a result of their hard work. But a clinic one day a week does not adequately serve the medical needs of this community when the nearest doctor for the other six days is an hour’s drive away.
    I have been doing some research and have found a possible answer to our dilemma. It may not sit well with a good many Germainers, but it would mean that a highly trained medical doctor would be here in Germaine seven days a week.
    Now we all may have quarrels with Fidel Castro, but Cuba has doctors to export. doctors who are willing to work in remote rural areas. Face it, Germaine, American doctors just can’t make enough in our sparsely populated bit of paradise to pay off their huge medical school student loans. Even if we could find a way to help them pay their loans we could never get them to commit to remaining here long enough to make it worth the expense. Doctors require a certain amount of glory, its part of the life-over-death God complex they develop. Germaine is too remote for glory.
    Let’s put aside political ideology for the moment. Long enough to at least consider the option of bringing a highly qualified doctor from a small Caribbean Island to our neck of the woods/desert. How many more citizens of Wilbur County will have to die simply because there is no doctor less than an hour away to treat a rattlesnake bite or bring a child’s fever down. I say hire the red, it’s better than dead.