Ali­cia Llanos

Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace says Cab­i­net has ap­proved a $250 mil­lion fund for sick chil­dren and adults.

Narace was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the new $7 mil­lion Mor­vant Health Cen­tre, Mor­vant. He said Cab­i­net re­cent­ly ap­proved a $250 mil­lion fund, un­der the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice, which gave ac­cess to ex­pen­sive over­seas med­ical treat­ment for both sick chil­dren and adults. Narace said the fund would be pooled from Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions and pri­vate/pub­lic part­ner­ships.

He said the min­istry was aim­ing to build a sus­tain­able fund which would pro­vide con­tin­u­ous re­lief to those in need. Narace said the Mor­vant Health Cen­tre rep­re­sent­ed one of three pri­ma­ry health care fa­cil­i­ties opened by the min­istry in last five weeks. He said so far 15 fa­cil­i­ties have been com­plet­ed since 2007 and the min­istry ex­pect­ed to open six ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties dur­ing the sec­ond half of 2010. He said by 2010 the min­istry would have reached its op­ti­mum goal of 105 pri­ma­ry health care fa­cil­i­ties na­tion­wide. Narace said a goal of open­ing the full equip health cen­tres was to re­duce the strain on the na­tion's hos­pi­tals. Us­ing the ex­am­ple of the new­ly-opened Siparia Health Care Cen­tre, he said the Mor­vant cen­tre would be able to treat mi­nor emer­gen­cies, such as wounds or mi­nor ill­ness­es.

Ad­dress­ing po­lit­i­cal at­tacks made about the lack of beds at the na­tion's hos­pi­tals, Narace said since 2007 more than 171 hos­pi­tal beds have been giv­en to the na­tion's hos­pi­tals. He said since 2007 beds at the San­dre Grande Hos­pi­tal had gone from 99 to 122, St Ann's Hos­pi­tal from 893 to 953 and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Com­plex from 267 to 355. He said that was ex­pect­ed to in­crease by 36 beds. Narace said sev­en new wards al­so had been opened, in­clud­ing the or­thopaedic and pae­di­atric wards, at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Narace al­so ad­dressed the is­sue of hir­ing for­eign doc­tors. He said the Gov­ern­ment had a long-stand­ing mas­sive pro­gramme with bur­saries and schol­ar­ships to ed­u­cate lo­cal doc­tors.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was fund­ing ed­u­ca­tion, both lo­cal­ly and abroad, to lo­cal stu­dents to en­sure there were ad­e­quate lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als. He al­so spoke of the min­istry's E-card which al­lowed doc­tors to di­rect­ly ac­cess pa­tients med­ical his­to­ry to en­sure ac­cu­rate care was giv­en.