Cas­san­dra Thomp­son -Forbes

Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis vis­it­ed the new Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal at Sig­nal Hill for the first time on Wednes­day.

She was ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Ver­nel­la Al­leyne�Top­pin, Sec­re­tary of Health and So­cial Ser­vices Al­bert Pil­grim and Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Ash­worth Jack. Dur­ing the tour ten­sions rose when both Cor­nelis and Pil­grim raised sev­er­al is­sues and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties they ob­served at the fa­cil­i­ty. Some ob­ser­va­tions in­clud­ed the de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of ser­vices, the need for MRI and CT scan ma­chines and the is­sue of dial­y­sis.

She said: "We are talk­ing about di­ver­si­fy­ing and de­cen­tral­is­ing and mak­ing sure health care is avail­able every­where and if our peo­ple can come to Trinidad for spe­cialised ser­vices or our peo­ple in Trinidad can come to To­ba­go for spe­cialised ser­vices. "I am not talk­ing about com­plex things like kid­ney trans­plants, I am talk­ing about sim­ple things, very sim­ple things like dial­y­sis. There are sev­er­al pa­tients who have to go to Trinidad for dial­y­sis." She added: "They do dial­y­sis in To­ba­go but not all peo­ple who need dial­y­sis are able to do it in To­ba­go. "There are pa­tients who are telling me they are fed up go­ing to Trinidad. They pre­fer to die be­cause it is dif­fi­cult to get a seat on the sea bridge. It so dif­fi­cult to get on a plane. I am talk­ing about things that you know about."

How­ev­er, dur­ing the heat­ed de­bate about the is­sues of the hos­pi­tal, Sec­re­tary of Health and So­cial Ser­vices Al­bert Pil­grim in­ter­vened stat­ing the dis­cus­sions were in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the cur­rent venue. He said: "I think in fair­ness to the sys­tem, I would have thought that we would have made a tour of the hos­pi­tal be­cause I don't want to get in­to some of the things here. "I don't think it is the ap­pro­pri­ate venue for these kinds of dis­cus­sions. I re­al­ly don't think it is. "I want to let you know that we have about ten dial­y­sis chairs that are sched­uled to come on stream at the new Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tre that is be­ing built at present and these would come be­fore the end of this fis­cal year." Bap­tiste�Cor­nelis said she vis­it­ed the new Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal on the re­quest of the Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment. The new hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to be ready for op­er­a­tion by next June.