Long waits for med­ical at­ten­tion and for surg­eries, no beds, poor health­care, ver­bal abuse, neg­li­gence and pre­scrip­tions not filled in a time­ly man­ner are some of the ma­jor com­plaints levied by sick pa­tients and their fam­i­lies against pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions in T&T, as ev­i­dent in nu­mer­ous me­dia re­ports.This has led many ill cit­i­zens to choose a pri­vate hos­pi­tal over a pub­lic one, once they can af­ford it.

In re­sponse to in­ci­dents of poor ser­vice in the health sec­tor that have en­dan­gered peo­ple's lives, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan out­lined a num­ber of mea­sures to im­prove the de­liv­ery of ser­vice, rang­ing from an in­jec­tion of for­eign doc­tors and nurs­es from Cu­ba, In­dia and Ugan­da, new lab ser­vices, cus­tomer re­la­tions train­ing, more equip­ment, fos­ter­ing of a healthy work at­ti­tude, in­creased sup­ply of beds, and a de­crease in the wait time for ad­mit­tance.

In a re­cent sur­vey on the gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of health­care, 65 per cent of re­spon­dents were un­sat­is­fied. Twen­ty-sev­en per cent of re­spon­dents said they were "to­tal­ly un­sat­is­fied," while 38 per cent said they were "un­sat­is­fied."These were the find­ings of a Trinidad Guardian poll con­duct­ed and su­per­vised by Prof Derek Chadee, di­rec­tor of the ANSA Mc AL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

The poll, a na­tion­wide sur­vey held from Jan­u­ary 29 to Feb­ru­ary 3, in­ter­viewed 507 re­spon­dents over the age of 18 se­lect­ed by a ran­dom dig­it di­alling method.The in­ten­tion of the sur­vey was to as­sess pop­u­lar opin­ion on a num­ber of ma­jor is­sues.Over­all, the sam­ple con­sist­ed of 35 per cent Afro-Trinida­di­ans, 39 per cent In­do-Trinida­di­ans, 25 per cent Mixed race and one per cent oth­er groups.Of the sam­ple, 53 per cent were fe­males.The mar­gin of er­ror is plus or mi­nus four per cent.

With re­gard to the gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of health­care, al­most two-thirds of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed that they were not sat­is­fied. Pre­cise­ly, 27 per cent re­port­ed that they were "to­tal­ly un­sat­is­fied," 38 per cent "un­sat­is­fied," 29 per cent "sat­is­fied," and three per cent "to­tal­ly sat­is­fied." For analy­ses, the cat­e­gories "to­tal­ly un­sat­is­fied" and "un­sat­is­fied" were re-cod­ed in­to a sin­gle cat­e­go­ry, "un­sat­is­fied." "To­tal­ly sat­is­fied" and "sat­is­fied" were re-cod­ed in­to the cat­e­go­ry "sat­is­fied."

Analysing re­spons­es by eth­nic­i­ty, Afro-Trinida­di­ans were most "un­sat­is­fied" with the Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of health­care, fol­lowed by Mixed peo­ple.Specif­i­cal­ly, 73 per cent Afro-Trinida­di­ans, 68 per cent Mixed, and 56 per cent In­do-Trinida­di­ans stat­ed that they were "un­sat­is­fied"–a five per cent dif­fer­ence be­tween Afro-Trinida­di­ans and Mixed, and a 17 per cent dif­fer­ence be­tween Afro-Trinida­di­ans and In­do-Trinida­di­ans.

Forty-one per cent In­do-Trinida­di­ans stat­ed they were "sat­is­fied," fol­lowed by Mixed (29 per cent), and Afro-Trinida­di­ans (24 per cent)–a 17 per cent dif­fer­ence be­tween Afro-Trinida­di­ans and In­do-Trinida­di­ans.Analysing re­spons­es by sex, 65 per cent males and 65 per cent fe­males in­di­cat­ed that they were "un­sat­is­fied," while 32 per cent of males and fe­males re­spond­ed "sat­is­fied."

With re­spect to ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground, 71 per cent of tech­ni­cal/vo­ca­tion­al and 69 per cent of ter­tiary-ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple in­di­cat­ed that they were "un­sat­is­fied," with 61 per cent sec­ondary and 59 per cent pri­ma­ry-ed­u­cat­ed re­spon­dents al­so in­di­cat­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the man­age­ment of the health­care sec­tor.

PUB­LIC COM­MENTS

How sat­is­fied are you with the gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of health­care?

UN­SAT­IS­FIED

�2 We nev­er get prop­er ser­vice at health cen­tres or at hos­pi­tals

�2 They need to buy new equip­ment to up­grade the hos­pi­tals

�2 There are a lot of sick peo­ple wait­ing out­side hos­pi­tals to get treat­ment

�2 It's sim­ple things like wheel­chairs and beds which are need­ed

SAT­IS­FIED

�2 San Fer­nan­do hos­pi­tal is im­prov­ing

�2 The new health cen­tres are well-equipped

�2 Cou­va health­care ser­vice is re­mark­able

How sat­is­fied are you with the Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of health­care?

To­tal­ly un­sat­is­fied 27 per cent

Un­sat­is­fied 38 per cent

Sat­is­fied 29 per cent

To­tal­ly sat­is­fied 3 per cent

Don't know 3 per cent