WILLEMSTAD — Ralph Voigt, chairman of the association of gynecologists and obstetricians on Curaçao, is furious about the statements by the Dutch Minister Edith Schippers (Public Health) that the specialist medical care for residents of the BES-Islands is better in Columbia than on Curaçao.In a letter to the editor, published on page 4, Voigt wrote: “Mrs. Schippers should be clear about what’s lacking precisely in the medical care on Curaçao. We are specialists trained in Dutch top-class centers, who have been working on quality improvement through research groups, partnerships and drawing up protocols; who have been training your Dutch doctors for years, but also yearn for a new building, more operation- and IC-beds, and more quality legislation in the medical care and more support personnel.”

The gynecologist calls on Dutch ministers to first speak with those providing the medical care, ‘before making political statements that nobody will be transferred to Curaçao as of 2013’. He calls on the ministers to ‘invest in the financing of a new hospital’!