Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Pro­fes­sor Ter­ence Seemu­n­gal lauds the Min­istry of Health’s search for a con­sul­tant to eval­u­ate its re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, af­ter read­ing the terms of ref­er­ence for the project, he won­ders whether one man will be able to do the eval­u­a­tion.

Seemu­n­gal, dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, led an in­quest in­to T&T’s COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence one year ago af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ves­ti­gate “Fac­tors Con­tribut­ing to Clin­i­cal Out­comes of COVID-19 Pa­tients in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Com­ment­ing on the eval­u­a­tion, he said, “This is (a) great idea, and it is very pos­i­tive that the Min­istry of Health would like to have an ex­ter­nal view and they are ask­ing for a com­pe­ti­tion-based ap­pli­ca­tion.”

In his com­mit­tee’s re­port, Seemu­n­gal not­ed lim­i­ta­tions to his as­sess­ment based on the avail­abil­i­ty of da­ta among oth­er mat­ters. That is why he be­lieves this eval­u­a­tion could pro­vide some­thing dif­fer­ent to what he and his com­mit­tee found.

“More time has gone and there will be more com­plete da­ta. Re­mem­ber our com­mit­tee had to look in­to da­ta in its raw form as it were . . . still be­ing col­lect­ed. Al­so, they will be able to in­ter­view the clients and their fam­i­lies which will give a com­pos­ite view of what tran­spired,” he said.

How­ev­er, while the po­si­tion does re­quire the con­sul­tant to have at least eight years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the health sec­tor among oth­er spe­cif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, it does not re­quire clin­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. That is some­thing Pro­fes­sor Seemu­n­gal sees as a short­fall along with it be­ing open to on­ly one per­son.

Asked if he be­lieved the stip­u­la­tions set out in the terms of ref­er­ence are enough for a prop­er and full as­sess­ment, Seemu­n­gal said: “Yes, but I won­der whether one in­di­vid­ual on­ly, who may be from a non-clin­i­cal back­ground, could re­al­ly ful­ly in­ter­pret the da­ta. It may be best to have a group in­clud­ing peo­ple from dif­fer­ent but ap­pro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al back­grounds.”

On Mon­day, the Min­istry of Health ad­ver­tised the va­can­cy for a con­sul­tant to eval­u­ate the coun­try’s re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and make rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment for fu­ture pan­demics.

“The re­sult of this as­sess­ment will help build pub­lic health care re­silience, in­form re­spons­es to fu­ture pan­demics; which will in­evitably oc­cur, and con­tribute to op­er­a­tional readi­ness for the full range of fu­ture dis­as­ters and emer­gen­cies,” the terms of ref­er­ence said.

The eval­u­a­tion is be­ing con­duct­ed as part of a loan arrange­ment with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank en­tered in­to in 2017. It was amend­ed to in­clude the eval­u­a­tion in 2020 af­ter the pan­dem­ic be­gan. The con­sul­tant will have six months to com­plete the work. The en­tire terms of ref­er­ence can be found on the Min­istry of Health’s web­site.

Five more COVID deaths

The Min­istry of Health con­firmed five COVID-19 fa­tal­i­ties over the last week on Tues­day. Ac­cord­ing to the week­ly re­lease, the four el­der­ly males and an el­der­ly fe­male bring the to­tal num­ber of COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths to 4,336.

There were 312 new COVID-19 cas­es from sam­ples col­lect­ed over the last sev­en days, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es in the coun­try since March 12, 2020, to 188,511. There are 135 ac­tive cas­es, 42 of whom are hos­pi­talised, in­clud­ing 31 in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem and 11 in the hy­brid sys­tem.