Petition Tag - hospital

I recently visited the Emperor Valley Zoo and it was more like the Valley of Death than an actual zoo. I was saddened by this situation and ever since I have been trying to see what can be done.

Emperor Valley Zoo - Zoo or Animal Graveyard? I have not been to the zoo for years and was expecting to see huge roaring lions, playful monkeys, dears and all the other unusual animals. As I wondered around the zoo, I got more than what I expected, the adrenalin rushed to my head my heart started pounding and my body became frigid with shock, not did I only get to meet the animals but their valley of death. These animals are not only kept there for the viewing pleasure of the public, but also to be tortured, mistreated, harmed, abused and neglected! My eyes were suddenly filled with tears, trying to picture myself in these poor animals places, and it hurts, just thinking about it. The animals just like every other human being has feelings too. It makes you question, why have a zoo, why have zookeepers, why display pain to the public and most important of all why have a Minister of Environmental issues. Does any of this make sense? Does our country only consist of people? All those that are part of the Zoological Society of Trinidad and Tobago should walk with their heads down in shame, because they have to be mentally sick to have the heart to ill-treat animals. You would have to be a HATER!

I have visited several countries and it's so nice to see how wholesome their environment is, almost makes you want to stay, and then I begin to think about driving through the streets of our islands as I am then escorted by stray dogs, dead dogs, vagrants and much more. Oh how proud I am of my country and my government. A government is put in place to take charge of the country and I do believe that it includes caring for all environmental matters and a lot of this begins at the zoo. The government thinks that they are making the every attempt to get rid of crime, but they themselves along with those that are involved with the environment department fail to realize that they are criminals too! They are individuals that do not see animal cruelty as a problem.

There should be animal cruelty laws, are there? If you look at the channel 39 on cable (Animal Planet), there is a program especially dedicated to deal with animal brutality, they literally arrest and press charges against people who can’t look out for animals. They take the animals away from them and carry them to an animal hospital, where they are treated with care and then carried away to homes where they can be loved.

Can you actually tell me you go to the zoo and enjoy looking at sick animals? I have seen with my own eyes animals that are meant to live an aquatic life, live without water and if there is water, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for months, since the moss seems to enjoy it more than the animals. It took me five minutes to find the dears, which were all cuddled up in a corner of their water-less den lying on the not so freshly cut grass looking as though they were on the verge of death. As for the three lions or maybe just two with one looking like a corpse, at least that is what it looked like, were trapped with an already eaten, but rottening bone. So very few lions we have, wonder if these strong, as they are known to be, creatures have the strength to even mate. Yes, it’s that bad, unbelievable but true. The visitors of the zoo on the other hand and the zookeepers I must add, had to enjoy a great deal of the foul smell, coming from the monkey’s cages. From what I gathered, this zoo will eventually be an “Animal’s Cemetery” Animals need to be nurtured, meaning to take care of, for those that don’t know. I just had to give the meaning of that word, because a lot of us really do not know.

This is not only a letter of complaint, but a plead to please fill these animal’s bowls with water, cut the grass, give them a need to run around in their dens, swim in their ponds, feed them, clean their homes, this has been their homes for quite some time, shower them love and attention, give them life and a chance to create a life. I would also like everyone to know that I am not stopping here; I am going to continue pleading until all this comes to a stop, by gathering those that are willing to help fight against this terrible situation, by addressing the Minister of Environment and others associated and I urge you to do your part to bring this to an end.

Fighting Against Animal Cruelty,
AM.

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The current CRNP Cindy Coogan is being relieved of her services from the health center in which she has served for many years. Her current patients are in disagreement with Titusville Hospital's decision to remove her from Tidioute as they consolidate. We are now supporting her decision to seek a doctor and health center in the Tidioute Borough through a different hospital, Warren General Hospital.

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On August 21, 2001 we were informed that Nestor Rodríguez Lobaina, president of the organization Young Cubans for Democracy, had been savagely beaten in the Guantanamo prison were he is serving a six year prison term for his activities as political dissident. During the beating he suffered a fractured jaw and contusions through out his body. He was transferred to the provincial hospital in Guantanamo. Arriving at the hospital he received another beating despite his head being sealed in plaster and leaving him immobilized. A guard named Manuel hopped on top of him and beat him. He was then placed in a punishment cell without lighting or air-conditioning, nor had he been fed for the previous day.

Amnesty International Urgent Action 169/99 Prisoner of conscience

CUBA Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina

Political activist Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina was arbitrarily arrested on 11 July 1999, and his whereabouts are now unknown. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression. Under harsh new legislation aimed at silencing dissent, he could face a long prison sentence.

Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, who is president of the Movimiento de Jovenes Cubanos por la Democracia (MJCD), Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy, was arrested at the MJCD coordinator's home in Santiago de Cuba. It is believed he was arrested because he had begun a hunger strike in solidarity with a group of dissidents in Havana known as the Ayunantes de Tamarindo 34, Tamarindo 34 Hunger-strikers, who began a 40-day hunger strike on 7 June to demand the release of all political prisoners and respect for human rights in Cuba.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina has been arrested several times. He was last detained for several days in February and March 1999. He was detained from 7-15 December 1998 after making a personal protest at the Cuban government's refusal to let him leave the country to attend a conference in Paris marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see UA 307/98, AMR 25/28/98, 9 December 1998, and follow-up, AMR 25/29/98, 18 December 1998). He had previously been arrested in April 1997 and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for "disrespect", and "resisting authority", after criticising the Fourteenth Youth and Student Festival.

He was also arrested on 6 June 1996, reportedly in connection with the MJCD's peaceful attempts to organize a movement for university reform in the capital. He was sentenced to 12 months' "restricted liberty", as well as five years of "destierro", internal exile or confinement, in his home town of Baracoa, Guantanamo province.

On 16 February 1999 Cuba's National Assembly passed tough new legislation aimed at combatting political dissent, called the "Ley de Proteccion de la Independencia Nacional y la Economia de Cuba", "Law for the Protection of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba". Under this new law, dissidents and journalists deemed to be working against the Cuban state reportedly face up to 20 years' imprisonment. The law calls for seven to 15 years' imprisonment for passing information to the United States that could be used to bolster anti-Cuban measures such as the US economic blockade of the island, rising to 20 years if the information is acquired surreptitiously. The legislation also bans the ownership, distribution or reproduction of "subversive materials" from the US government, and proposes jail terms of up to five years for collaborating with radio and TV stations and publications deemed to be assisting US policy.

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The character of Alexis "Natasha" Davis on ABC's General Hospital has always been a strong, independent, if slightly neurotic attorney with an interesting and complex control drives that usually push her away from straight forward relationships with men. Her current storyline has been dissatifactory and and this petition supports the idea for a future and better story line of having her discover, deal with, and explore her homosexuality.

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Tony Clement has decided to close the Heart Unit at CHEO. All children requiring heart surgery, oxygen in their blood, or specialized bypasses will be required to go to Toronto.

Many children are not able to travel to Toronto, with the closure of the Children's Hospital of Western Ontario last year, all of Ontario's children requiring heart sugeries will be required to travel to Toronto. Many children do not have the time left to travel to Toronto and will die on the way. Keeping the Heart Unit in Ottawa will save many lives.

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My son, Shane, was born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). CDH is a birth defect that occurs when the diaphragm does not fully form allowing the abdominal organs to enter into the chest cavity, preventing the lungs from growing. He was born at a small, country hospital and transferred to a larger, university hospital. When Shane arrived at this hospital, he was doing so well he wasn't even intubated, amazing for a kid that had only 1 lung, but oxygen alone seemed to stabilize him enough for transfer, and he was wide awake, and his eyes were focused when they wheeled him in to say good-bye before he boarded the helicopter. By the next day, he was paralyzed on Pavulon and ventilated-- standard procedure to rest his lungs and truly stabilize before his repair. During the 3 days before his repair, the surgeons explained to us that gore-tex would be used but we never saw them the morning before Shane's surgery, and we were never even asked to sign a consent form. After 6 hours in surgery, the surgeon came out and told us that he had used part of Shane's lung sequestration to repair his diaphragm. The lung sequestration was the bottom portion of Shane's lung that hadn't fully formed or inflated and looked like a deflated balloon. He had an extra blood vessel going from his heart to this "squished" portion of lung, which was not removed during the repair and which caused congestive heart failure. This was an extremely experimental procedure, never documented in medical journals, never even tried on lab animals, and it just didn't even make common sense to use damaged tissue with no elasticity. Our consent for this procedure was never asked or given. For 4 months, Shane couldn't be stabilized. His blood gases were so out of whack that an ECMO machine was parked beside him for weeks, but it was never used. He endured pneumonia 4 times, dozens of blood infections, a tracheostomy, and by the time his 2nd repair was done, he had suffered severe brain damage leaving him blind and deaf and in the intensive care unit for a total of 10 months.

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My son, Shane, was born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). CDH is a birth defect that occurs when the diaphragm does not fully form allowing the abdominal organs to enter into the chest cavity, preventing the lungs from growing. I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks and then another at 8 and a half months. The ultrasound was performed, and they said everything was OK but wouldn't give us any pictures until they gave in to my begging a few weeks later- only to give a picture of Shane's backside. An ultrasound at 8 months gestation on a baby who had virtually no left diaphragm, the majority of his abdominal organs in his chest, 2 heart murmurs, and a displaced heart, and they claimed they saw nothing.

When we requested Shane's medical records a few years later, there it was in black and white on the technician's note- "Stomach missing." They knew something was wrong and never told us, never did more testing, never referred us to a specialist. If we had known, had time to research, we never would have allowed Shane to be treated at the facility that he was transferred to after birth, a hospital with an extremely low CDH survival rate. If we had known, Shane wouldn't have been subjected to the trauma of a transfer and wouldn't have been delivered at a hospital that didn't even have a pediatrician in the building because it was after 5:00 p.m and he wouldn't have suffered many severe complications. Shane died in 1999 at age 6 and a half as a result of these complications. They had no right to withold information that could have saved my son's life.

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My son, Shane, was born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). CDH is a birth defect that occurs when the diaphragm does not fully form allowing the abdominal organs to enter into the chest cavity, preventing the lungs from growing. I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks and then another at 8 and a half months. The ultrasound was performed, and they said everything was OK but wouldn't give us any pictures until they gave in to my begging a few weeks later- only to give a picture of Shane's backside. An ultrasound at 8 months gestation on a baby who had virtually no left diaphragm, the majority of his abdominal organs in his chest, 2 heart murmurs, and a displaced heart, and they claimed they saw nothing. When we requested Shane's medical records a few years later, there it was in black and white on the technician's note- "Stomach missing." They knew something was wrong and never told us, never did more testing, never referred us to a specialist. If we had known, had time to research, we never would have allowed Shane to be treated at the facility that he was transferred to after birth, a hospital with an extremely low CDH survival rate. If we had known, Shane wouldn't have been subjected to the trauma of a transfer and wouldn't have been delivered at a hospital that didn't even have a pediatrician in the building because it was after 5:00 p.m and he wouldn't have suffered many severe complications. Shane died in 1999 at age 6 and a half as a result of these complications. In the United States, ultrasound technicians do not have to be certified and there is no standards or laws on who can/cannot perform ultrasounds.

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