Camille McEach­nie

To­ba­go’s al­ter­na­tive Health Sec­re­tary from the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Dr Faith B.Yis­rael has tak­en Health Sec­re­tary Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine to task over her ap­proach to deal­ing with the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go.

David­son-Ce­les­tine is the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, PDP’s deputy lead­ers As­sem­bly­man Yis­rael al­leged the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty(TRHA) is poor­ly man­aged.

She al­so claimed pa­tients seek­ing treat­ment at the hos­pi­tal for var­i­ous ill­ness­es con­tract COVID there.

Yis­rael has a Doc­tor of Pub­lic Health (DrPH) de­gree in Be­hav­iour­al and Com­mu­ni­ty Health Sci­ences from the Grad­u­ate School of Pub­lic Health, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, a Mas­ter of Pub­lic Health (MPH) de­gree and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (BSc) de­gree in Neu­ro­science from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh.

At two suc­ces­sive press con­fer­ences in Ju­ly, the TRHA in­di­cat­ed there was a “clus­ter of in­fec­tions” in the Male Med­ical Ward at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal.

The au­thor­i­ty said 31 staff mem­bers and 11 pa­tients be­came in­fect­ed from a COVID- pos­i­tive pa­tient. Four pa­tients died.

How­ev­er, the Yis­rael al­leged that oth­er “clus­ters” of in­fec­tions ex­ist on oth­er wards at the hos­pi­tal, and the PNM- con­trolled TRHA is “cov­er­ing up” the sit­u­a­tion.

Yis­rael cit­ed yes­ter­day’s To­ba­go Health Up­date press brief­ing, at­tend­ed on­ly by David­son-Ce­les­tine and pri­ma­ry health care nurs­ing man­ag­er Kathy-Ann Greenidge-Ot­t­ley, as an at­tempt to “cov­er-up the sit­u­a­tion.”

Yis­rael ques­tioned the ab­sence of se­nior med­ical per­son­nel on the day To­ba­go record­ed its high­est num­ber of new COVID cas­es since March 2020.

The TRHA said there were 52 new in­fec­tions.

She said,”I was hop­ing to get an idea of the plan to treat with the spike... con­sid­er­ing where na­tion­al­ly the num­bers seem to be go­ing down... sad­ly we had a sit­u­a­tion where there were none of the reg­u­lar health pro­fes­sion­als who usu­al­ly come for­ward to have can­did con­ver­sa­tions with the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Med­ical chief of staff Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er, pri­ma­ry care ser­vices Man­ag­er Dr Rox­anne Mitchelle and coun­ty med­ical of health’s– COVID Re­sponse Team– mem­ber DrAn­tho­ny Thomp­son usu­al­ly at­tend the brief­ing.

The PDP’s deputy leader said she tuned in­to the press con­fer­ence to get up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion on the COVID sit­u­a­tion.

“ The ab­sence of the reg­u­lar health pro­fes­sion­als... iden­ti­fies in my mind a lack of gen­uine lead­er­ship on the part of the Sec­re­tary of Health,” Yis­rael said.

At the brief­ing yes­ter­day, the Health Sec­re­tary told the me­dia she is there to dis­cuss THA’s pol­i­cy ap­proach to health is­sues in To­ba­go. She said the TRHA is not hid­ing in­for­ma­tion.

“When I sit here the in­for­ma­tion I pro­vide is ac­cu­rate... as we have it record­ed on our sys­tems ...No one here is hid­ing any sit­u­a­tion...There is no cov­er-up at the hos­pi­tal,’ David­son- Ce­les­tine said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM for com­ment on Yis­rael’s al­le­ga­tions but did not get any re­sponse up to press time.