Sen. Nereida "Nellie" Rivera-O’Reilly wasn’t leaving anything to chance when the Senate Committere on Appropriations and Budget took up her bill to appropriate money to purchase a mammography machine for the Gov. Juan F. Luis Memorial Hospital on St. Croix.
Before her bill came up for hearing, she’d already been at work, passing out pink trinkets – pens, ribbons, notepads and other goodies – commemorating October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. All the senators on the committee got them, along with observers, witnesses, staff, reporters, and anyone else in Frederiksted’s Fritz E. Lawaetz Legislative Conference Room.
Sen. Carlton "Ital" Dowe, chairman of the committee, congratulated O’Reilly on "a veteran move."
"How can we vote against the bill when we’re wearing these?" he laughed.
In fact, there was a fair amount of pink in the wardrobes of both testifiers and some of the senators when the hearing took place.
O’Reilly’s bnill would allocate $300,000 for the purchase of a digital mammography machine for the hospital.
O’Reilly said figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that a woman in America dies of breast cancer every 12 minutes, with 211,000 new cases reported annually in the U.S. It is the leading cause of death among women between the ages of 40 and 55, and black and Hispanic women are more likely to die of the disease than white women.
Early detection of breast cancer is the key to treating it, she said, and mammography offers the best chance of early detection.
But there are only three mammogram machines in the territory, she said; two on St. Thomas — at Schneider Hospital and in a private practice — and one in private practice on St. Croix.
There are approximately 30,000 women on St. Croix, O’Reilly reminded her male colleagues, and statistically, one in every seven is likely to develop breast cancer.
"Many underprivileged woman continue to slip through the health care gap," O’Reilly said, with the cost of mammograms running between $120 and $200. "This has to change. We in the Virgin Islands have an opportunity to change this model."
Uninsured women and women on Medicare are at a disadvantage in obtaining the test that could save their lives.
"The lives of the women of St. Croix are hanging in the balance," she said.
And breast cancer does not strike women only. Men can also contract the disease.
There was general support for the bill throughout the committee, but concerns were raised both about the source of the funding and whether the hospital was the best place to put the effort.
As written, the bill would have allocated funds from the Health Department Revolving Fund. Representatives of the department urged the committee instead to use the money in the revolving health fund to support a Department of Health program that would put mammography machines in mobile vehicles that could take the service throughout the island.
There were also questions about whether appropriating $300,000 for the machine would be enough to start a program, or if additional funds would be needed.
The continued questions over the course of the two-hour plus hearing eventually brought an impassioned response from O’Reilly, who noted that the 28th Legislature has 44 years of combined experience among the senators, while she has been in the body for nine months.
"If that’s not the right source for funding, help me find the one that is," she said hotly. She also had strong words for the squabbling between the hospital and health department. The point is to serve the health needs of the women of St. Croix, she said.
The committee approved an amendment by Sen. Sammuel Sanes to increase the allocation from the original $150,000 to $300,000, the difference between a standard mammogram machine and a digital one. Then the same 5-0 vote forwarded the bill to the Rules Committee, where it will be further refined.
Voting in favor of the bill were Dowe, Sanes, Sens. Patrick Sprauve, Wayne James, and Terrence "Positive: Nelson. Senators Craig Barshinger and Louis Hill, also members of the committee, were not present.
In other business, the committee:
- approved and forwarded to the Rules Committee a bill too allocate $107,500 to Our Town Frederiksted, a private, not-for-profit group that for more than 20 years has championed economic development, physical restoration, historical awareness and community safety in Frederiksted and the western half of St. Croix; the organization will use the funds for operations, including the salary for a new executive director and assistant, and an accountant;
- approved and forwarded to the Rules Committee a bill appropriating $70,855 for flood mitigation in Hannah’s Rest. The money will be spent to lower the road which runs from the Arthur Richards Junior High School and Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge. The road is higher than the surrounding property, damming up runoff when rains are heavy.
