Gail Alexan­der

Are health ser­vices cat­e­goris­ing COVID pa­tients ac­cord­ing to their age and co­mor­bidi­ties and us­ing this ba­sis to de­ter­mine who they‘ll take care of or shunt aside?

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last night called for an­swers on this sit­u­a­tion af­ter a let­ter was sent to her. This de­tailed the case of a 86-year-old man who died last week at the Cou­va hos­pi­tal.

“Is it some peo­ple see them­selves as God and they de­ter­mine who they will take care of or shunt aside?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked.

She raised the is­sue dur­ing last night's UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum. The meet­ing was un­af­fect­ed by the cur­rent state of emer­gency and cur­few re­stric­tions since it was pre-record­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there has been much talk of med­ical care at health fa­cil­i­ties, over­crowd­ing and ven­ti­la­tor short­ages. She said in­for­ma­tion was be­ing re­ceived that “they” were cat­e­go­riz­ing peo­ple who were old or with med­ical pre-con­di­tions (co­mor­bidi­ties) and not much pri­or­i­ty was placed on such peo­ple as they might die.

“Is this true?” she asked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said some­one sent her a case of the 86 year old whose life was “stolen” on May 14.

She read­ing aloud the per­son’s let­ter. This stat­ed that the el­der­ly man who was home­bound con­tract­ed COVID. His oxy­gen sup­ply was af­fect­ed de­spite a do­nat­ed oxy­gen gen­er­a­tor.

The let­ter stat­ed an am­bu­lance which was called, took four hours to ar­rive and the dri­ver spoke of hor­rors at hos­pi­tals. How­ev­er, Cou­va Hos­pi­tal had ac­cept­ed the man as some­one had just died and a bed had be­come avail­able.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the let­ter writer promised the man he’d be brought back home but the fam­i­ly lat­er re­gret­ted send­ing him “…If we ‘d known what would have hap­pened next.”

The man had co­mor­bidi­ties as well as be­ing el­der­ly and the fam­i­ly knew that the odds were against him. But the writer added that the first call from the hos­pi­tal was that “Your dad is very sick and be­cause of his age he didn’t qual­i­fy for ICU (In­ten­sive Care Unit).”

The writer said the sys­tem was over­run and be­cause of the gov­ern­ment pro­gramme, the man wasn’t a can­di­date for fur­ther treat­ment but was a body in a pro­duc­tion line with pre-des­tined re­sults.

The let­ter added, “We knew we made the wrong choice, he died alone and scared on Fri­day at 7.35 am, we were con­tact­ed at 4.07 pm,”

The writer stat­ed they shared the in­for­ma­tion as their sto­ry was sim­i­lar to "far too many peo­ple’s". The per­son felt the med­ical sys­tem nev­er re­al­ly re­spond­ed suf­fi­cient­ly. The day the man was ad­mit­ted there were 342 in hos­pi­tals, nine in ICU and 58 in HDU.

The writer crit­i­cized the Prime Min­is­ter in whose hands they said fate was left. While he spent three weeks with COVID, they added that he emerged ar­ro­gant­ly be­rat­ing peo­ple. They al­so said the cur­few was use­less. The writer stat­ed the sit­u­a­tion was an in­dict­ment on the Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment and “every per­son di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly in Gov­ern­ment’s ser­vice.

"I’m not an­ti PNM, I’m an­ti sense­less death," they added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the writer wasn’t a UNC per­son, "I agree we’re not putting sys­tems in place to save lives – are you cat­e­goris­ing peo­ple this way?"

Should the sys­tem con­tin­ue to be over­bur­dened she sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment use schools and oth­er build­ings which could be retro­fit­ted for hos­pi­tal use.

Kam­la slam Row­ley's "jack­ass" re­mark

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment last week where – warn­ing peo­ple on the COVID sit­u­a­tion - he quot­ed from ca­lyp­son­ian De­von Seales' “Don’t Jack­ass De Scene.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “How can you use that ob­scene lan­guage in the pub­lic do­main?! You’re not a ca­lyp­son­ian, is that what you teach your chil­dren… “

“You have po­et­ic li­cence or ca­lyp­son­ian’s li­cence? You want to kicks off – do your job! You are Prime Min­is­ter and we’re very dis­ap­point­ed in you!”

She al­so called for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on state of emer­gency reg­u­la­tions where of­fices of MPs, coun­cil­lors and the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fice were con­cerned. She not­ed reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it­ed gath­er­ings at work­places with­out ex­emp­tion.

But po­lit­i­cal par­ties - such as PNM, UNC and oth­ers - are caught in this since they have work­places that are al­so pub­lic places. Un­der the reg­u­la­tions, press con­fer­ences may not be able to be held at such of­fices, she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was un­cer­tain if those of­fices fell un­der the reg­u­la­tions since Par­lia­ment – to which those of­fices are af­fil­i­at­ed- is ex­empt from reg­u­la­tions.

She said MPs all func­tion out­side of Par­lia­ment al­so and peo­ple come to their of­fices to seek as­sis­tance.

“In a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy these (op­er­a­tions) are a vi­tal part of the democ­ra­cy and par­ties must be al­lowed to op­er­ate even if lim­it­ed. This (is­sue) is a se­ri­ous breach and vi­o­la­tion of our democ­ra­cy.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for pro­vi­sions to al­low those of­fices to op­er­ate and for peo­ple to ac­cess them even if on­ly five at a time. She re­quest­ed for MPs, the same con­ces­sion where­by trade unions are be­ing al­lowed to op­er­ate.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called on the US to pro­vide some of its 80 mil­lion vac­cines to T&T and called for the Prime Min­is­ter to pur­sue such a do­na­tion.

"Don’t be ashamed to beg to save lives Prime Min­is­ter."

To keep the coun­try go­ing and food af­ford­able, she sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment re­move VAT on food and pay busi­ness peo­ples’ VAT re­funds

She said Gov­ern­ment's 25,000 promised ham­pers were re­duced be­fore they were even giv­en and peo­ple were al­so un­able to get re­lief grants if they had no bank ac­count.

She said the UNC had to act to as­sist as it did dur­ing the 2020 lock­down.

“We’re open­ing re­lief cen­tres all over T&T. The UNC will help those who can't af­ford even their ba­sic needs at this time. We’re ask­ing the wider pop­u­la­tion to re­spond to the very re­al threat of food in­se­cu­ri­ty that thou­sands of our cit­i­zens are fac­ing dai­ly.”

“You can con­tribute to this ini­tia­tive with food­stuff, house­hold sup­plies, or you can even vol­un­teer lo­gis­ti­cal as­sists.”

She added that UNC sup­ports the T&T Mus­lim League's stance on the Is­rael-Pales­tine is­sue.

For­mer MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh ad­vised the pub­lic not to wait for any spe­cial vac­cine brand and to get vac­ci­nat­ed. He said it’s now be­ing con­clud­ed Sinopharm ‘s vac­cine for in­stance is very ef­fi­cient and WHO ap­proved.

He rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment al­low the pri­vate sec­tor with dis­tri­b­u­tion when more vac­cines ar­rived. He al­so said po­lit­i­cal lead­ers must have a cease­fire and form a na­tion­al front to deal with the is­sue. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar agreed to this.