Yvonne Ba­boolal

A chick­en pox im­mu­ni­sa­tion cam­paign will soon be launched by the Gov­ern­ment.This was dis­closed Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tise-Cor­nelis in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day."Cab­i­net has ap­proved the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ex­pand­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­ni­sa­tion Unit to bet­ter man­age our na­tion­al im­mu­ni­sa­tion pro­gramme," she said."In this vein, we are al­so work­ing with the Caribbean Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Cen­tre and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion to launch a Chick­en Pox Im­mu­ni­sa­tion Pro­gramme," Bap­tise-Cor­nelis said.Ad­dress­ing the me­dia dur­ing the tea break, the min­is­ter said she was not ful­ly aware that there ever was a na­tion­al chick­en pox im­mu­ni­sa­tion pro­gramme in T&T be­fore.

She said in the past, pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments looked at the ques­tion of cost and no prop­er im­mu­ni­sa­tion unit was in place.She said the main con­cern about chick­en pox was its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, since a child could con­tract it at school and go home and give it to her par­ents and sib­lings.Asked about the cost to the Gov­ern­ment for the pro­gramme, she said the had not come up with a cost as yet, but in­di­cat­ed it may not be too cost­ly.She said they were look­ing at giv­ing vac­cines to chil­dren from birth to age five.The min­is­ter said a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion was made two weeks ago, but her dis­clo­sure yes­ter­day fol­lowed re­ports of a chick­en pox out­break at an Ari­ma school.

In a sep­a­rate mat­ter, the min­is­ter said yes­ter­day that the board of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) ad­vised her that they made a dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary de­ci­sion to sus­pend five doc­tors and four nurs­es af­ter the death of Crys­tal Boodoo-Ram­soomair.Her con­fir­ma­tion fol­lowed claims by the Med­ical Prac­ti­tion­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MPATT) yes­ter­day that the doc­tors did not re­ceive let­ters of sus­pen­sion but went on leave.The min­is­ter said the sus­pen­sion of the doc­tors and nurs­es were by no means a stain on their rep­u­ta­tion, but al­lowed for the lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty the na­tion de­mand­ed.

"This Gov­ern­ment must re­store pa­tient con­fi­dence in our de­liv­ery of ma­ter­nal health ser­vices."She said a team set up to in­ves­ti­gate Boodoo-Ram­soomair's death would sub­mit a re­port to her on all con­di­tions and poli­cies that were or were not ad­hered to.She said the Prime Min­is­ter had es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee to re­view ob­stet­rics and gy­nae­col­o­gy ser­vices by all health in­sti­tu­tions.