Yvonne Webb

In the on­go­ing saga at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, act­ing Med­ical Di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon is next in line to get the axe, when his con­tract ends on March 31, leav­ing be­hind 31 years of ser­vice at this in­sti­tu­tion.In­di­ca­tion of his re­moval from the top post comes one day af­ter the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty sacked its for­mer CEO Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch over her fail­ure to car­ry out an in­struc­tion to is­sue sus­pen­sion let­ters to five doc­tors and five nurs­es.The very vo­cal Cha­toor­goon who has pub­licly spo­ken out against the pro­ce­dure used to sus­pend staff over the botched C-sec­tion of Crys­tal Bodoo-Ram­soomair, and the sub­se­quent fir­ing of Chester-Cum­ber­batch, said he knew it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore it came to this.

"I got a call from the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Hu­man Re­sources, this morn­ing (Fri­day) in­form­ing me that at a meet­ing of the board yes­ter­day evening (Thurs­day), the de­ci­sion was tak­en for my con­tract not to be ex­tend­ed, " Cha­toor­goon said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.An anaes­thetist by pro­fes­sion, Cha­toor­goon, who has worked at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal since 1981, said he had the op­tion to re­turn to his sub­stan­tive post as an anaes­thetist in the In­ten­sive Care De­part­ment from April 1.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that his con­tract as an anaes­thetist al­so end­ed on April 20, and he was con­sid­er­ing his op­tion to stay un­til this date or go on leave.He said in the next two weeks, the post of Med­ical Di­rec­tor would be ad­ver­tised and po­ten­tial can­di­dates would be in­ter­viewed.He has the op­tion to ap­ply, but Cha­toor­goon said he would cer­tain­ly not do so."I will not be among those ap­ply­ing be­cause I will not be com­fort­able work­ing with an ad­min­is­tra­tion which has func­tioned so un­law­ful­ly, so un­rea­son­ably and so wrong­ly," he said.

He said the man­ner in which the board han­dled the sus­pen­sion of the doc­tors and nurs­es and the ter­mi­na­tion of the CEO was wrong."I cer­tain­ly can­not sup­port such ac­tions. I can­not main­tain my si­lence," he said.Cha­toor­goon called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­ter­vene and re­in­state Chester-Cum­ber­batch, who has in­di­cat­ed her in­ten­tion to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion in this mat­ter, and to re­move the Min­is­ter of Health Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis."If they want blood, take mine," he said, point­ing out that he felt guilty be­cause he ad­vised Chester-Cum­ber­batch to de­lay the is­suance of the sus­pen­sion let­ters to en­sure every­one in­volved was pro­tect­ed.

He charged that Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis forced the for­mer CEO to is­sue the sus­pen­sion let­ters, when there was no ur­gency to do so be­cause the doc­tors were al­ready re­moved from the hos­pi­tal, af­ter the di­rec­tive on the Fri­day be­fore."Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch did an ex­cel­lent job...She ran the ship where we had no board and she did a mar­vel­lous job," Cha­toor­goon said."I hon­est­ly do be­lieve this Min­is­ter of Health does not un­der­stand how sen­si­tive health is­sues are and the way she is go­ing about do­ing things, I hon­est­ly do not think she is suit­able for this job."