Ali­cia Llanos

Twen­ty-five Vin­cent­ian nurs­es will be as­signed to var­i­ous health­care fa­cil­i­ties in T&T to ad­dress the short­age of gen­er­al nurs­es in the health sec­tor. An­oth­er 20 spe­cial­i­ty nurs­es from the Philip­pines are ex­pect­ed to join them with­in the next four to six weeks, ac­cord­ing to David Con­stant, di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Co-op­er­a­tion Desk at the Min­istry of Health. That desk serves as a li­ai­son be­tween the min­istry and its in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers that in­clude the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) and Cari­com.

A func­tion of the desk is the re­cruit­ment of for­eign health­care pro­fes­sion­als on be­half of the min­istry.

Yes­ter­day an ori­en­ta­tion pro­gramme was held for the reg­is­tered nurs­es from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines at the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. Con­stant told the me­dia the nurs­es had been re­cruit­ed through an agree­ment with the St Vin­cent Gov­ern­ment and were work­ing on a three-year con­tract. The 22 fe­male and three male nurs­es were ex­pect­ed to fill gaps with­in the sys­tem that called for gen­er­al nurs­es. Con­stant said over the next week they would work with­in the North Cen­tral and North West­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties be­fore be­ing as­signed to per­ma­nent fa­cil­i­ties.

He said the nurs­es' in­di­vid­ual skill sets would be used to de­ter­mine where they were most need­ed.

Min­is­ter of Health Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said due to the short­fall of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als the min­istry would con­tin­ue to re­cruit for­eign nurs­es and doc­tors. She said the min­istry had giv­en pref­er­ence to na­tion­als to fill va­can­cies with­in the pub­lic health sec­tor. How­ev­er, there was a short­age of na­tion­als will­ing to work in the sec­tor, she said. "The de­mands for health­care pro­fes­sion­als keep in­creas­ing and the lo­cal sources of sup­ply have not been able to meet that de­mand," she said. She said a ma­jor "stum­bling block" in the re­cruit­ment of na­tion­als was the salary, as the min­istry could not pay the rate pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ties of­fered.

Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said the min­istry had been ap­proached by the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment to sup­ply doc­tors to T&T. The min­istry was al­so work­ing on re­cruit­ing more Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es, she added. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said in both cas­es the min­istry re­quired that ap­pli­cants spoke Eng­lish as a con­di­tion for em­ploy­ment. She said the min­istry had de­cid­ed to do so af­ter pub­lic com­plaints about the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and un­der­stand­ing be­tween pa­tients and for­eign doc­tors.