Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Ravi Rati­ram says many peo­ple who have lost con­fi­dence in the pub­lic health sys­tem may have dengue but are not go­ing to hos­pi­tals.

He claimed, there­fore, that the fig­ures be­ing re­vealed by the Min­istry of Health “might have to be mul­ti­plied three and four times” to be ac­cu­rate.

Rati­ram was speak­ing at Thurs­day’s UNC Cou­va North Bud­get talks.

Mean­while, at the bud­get talks, Dr Vishali Sie­u­nar­ine, who is in the pri­vate sec­tor and worked in the pub­lic health sec­tor up to 2019, claimed some hos­pi­tals have been in­struct­ed to stop/slow down test­ing for dengue, and some have not opened up their vi­ral path­ways for fear of alarm­ing and scar­ing the pub­lic.

Ex­press­ing con­cern about the short­fall in the pub­lic health sec­tor where she had once worked, Sie­u­nar­ine claimed it was gross­ly un­der­staffed; there was a need for doc­tors, nurs­es, and in­creased staff in the emer­gency de­part­ment and in­ter­nal med­i­cine.

She said ju­nior doc­tors’ morale was at an all-time low, many suf­fered de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety, and feel abused and tak­en ad­van­tage of. She said a doc­tor works five weeks a month, which is un­fair and many leave. Sie­u­nar­ine said that from 180 mem­bers in her 2015 year, if she saw 20 of them in T&T to­day, that would be plen­ty. She cit­ed a lack of re­sources with ma­chines break­ing down week­ly.

Ex-PP Min­is­ter Jairam Seemu­n­gal called out the Gov­ern­ment on agri­cul­ture, the lack of prepa­ra­tion for bird flu, and the state of squat­ter reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion.