Richard Lord

Protest­ing doc­tors at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work to­day as a health cri­sis was avert­ed af­ter the in­ter­ven­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, chair­men of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties and the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MPATT), which rep­re­sents the doc­tors, met for the sec­ond day yes­ter­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's to re­solve their con­cerns.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the first meet­ing took place on Wednes­day evening at the same venue. At the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence which was held lat­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said "con­sen­sus was ar­rived at." She said the doc­tors had agreed to "sup­port and co-op­er­ate" with a re­view of op­er­a­tions at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. This probe was or­dered af­ter the death of a 29-year-old Chrys­tal Boodoo-Ram­soomair dur­ing a Cae­sare­an Sec­tion on March 4. The PM said the ex­er­cise was in­tend­ed "to as­cer­tain whether there was any sys­tem­at­ic short­com­ings or in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ures."

She said the dis­ci­pli­nary probe which was a mat­ter for the SWRHA Board would fol­low the sys­tems re­view un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of Health. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal would re­place Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har on the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee to re­view and ex­am­ine the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues at the SWRHA. That com­mit­tee is be­ing chaired by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, and in­cludes Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod.

The PM said the ma­jor is­sue af­fect­ing the doc­tors was their act­ing ap­point­ments as reg­is­trars and con­sul­tants. She read a let­ter from the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ser­vices, Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment which con­firmed that "doc­tors who are pur­su­ing their post-grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tion and were ap­point­ed to act in the of­fices of reg­is­trar and con­sul­tant can law­ful­ly con­tin­ue to dis­charge those func­tions and du­ties." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as a con­se­quence of this as­sur­ance, "the doc­tors have agreed to re­sume du­ties with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and con­tin­ue to pro­vide ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to their pa­tients." She not­ed, how­ev­er, that the sus­pen­sions of five doc­tors and five nurs­es, af­ter Boodoo-Ram­soomair's death re­mained in ef­fect and any de­ci­sion to can­cel or ex­tend would be made by the SWRHA.

MPATT's spokesman, Col­in Fur­longe, said the is­sue of doc­tors' ap­point­ments had been crit­i­cal.

He said it was that is­sue which led to the health ser­vice be­ing "quite un­der­manned and as a re­sult of which pa­tients have been hav­ing to wait longer hours and their surg­eries post­poned." He al­so apol­o­gised for Boodoo-Ram­soomair's death. "I would like to apol­o­gise to the fam­i­ly and I un­der­stand, just like any­one else, all the doc­tors and the pub­lic, some of the suf­fer­ing of the fam­i­lies of pa­tients who have lost lives," he said. Fur­longe was high in praise for the mem­bers of the pan­el.

Fur­longe said the doc­tors felt the team would en­gen­der trust in the health sec­tor. "We have a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple who we are com­fort­able with, will do a trust­wor­thy job, will be fair and will be able to guide us-whether there would be hu­man er­ror or in­sti­tu­tion de­fi­cien­cies," he stressed.

MPATT's gen­er­al sec­re­tary, She­henaz Mo­hammed, said doc­tors were "com­fort­ed" by Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­ter­ven­tion. She said be­fore the PM's in­ter­ven­tion, the health sec­tor was fac­ing a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. She said the PM's in­ter­ven­tion was "very time­ly and we feel as­sured that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that's go­ing to take place would be thor­ough, fair and trans­par­ent." Mo­hammed ex­pressed the hope that the de­lib­er­a­tions would lead to an im­prove­ment in the health sec­tor and a way for­ward for the na­tion.