The Greater Ari­ma Cham­ber of Com­merce has wel­comed the open­ing of the new Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, de­scrib­ing it as a long-await­ed step for­ward for health­care de­liv­ery in east Trinidad.

The de­part­ment of­fi­cial­ly be­gan op­er­a­tions on Fri­day, five years af­ter the fa­cil­i­ty was orig­i­nal­ly built for that pur­pose. The move re­lo­cat­ed emer­gency ser­vices from the Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In a state­ment, the Cham­ber thanked Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Bhadase See­ta­hal-Maraj, se­nior ex­ec­u­tives, health­care pro­fes­sion­als and oth­ers in­volved in bring­ing the fa­cil­i­ty in­to op­er­a­tion.

The Cham­ber said res­i­dents of Ari­ma and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties had been wait­ing years for the de­part­ment to be­come ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

It said the re­lo­ca­tion would im­prove ac­cess to emer­gency health­care by plac­ing ser­vices clos­er to hos­pi­tal sup­port units, in­clud­ing CT and MRI imag­ing, lab­o­ra­to­ry di­ag­nos­tics, in­ten­sive care fa­cil­i­ties, op­er­at­ing the­atres and out­pa­tient clin­ics.

The NCRHA con­firmed emer­gency ser­vices are now ful­ly op­er­a­tional at the new lo­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Au­thor­i­ty, Dr Gopeesingh, See­ta­hal-Maraj and mem­bers of the se­nior ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team were present dur­ing the tran­si­tion, meet­ing staff, pa­tients and rel­a­tives while ob­serv­ing op­er­a­tions.

The NCRHA said staff en­sured un­in­ter­rupt­ed pa­tient care dur­ing the move and praised work­ers for main­tain­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism and pre­pared­ness through­out the process.

Of­fi­cials said the re­lo­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to strength­en co­or­di­nat­ed emer­gency care, im­prove pa­tient out­comes, re­duce re­sponse times and en­hance the over­all pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence.

Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Greater Ari­ma Cham­ber of Com­merce Im­ran Ali said the de­vel­op­ment rep­re­sent­ed an im­por­tant im­prove­ment for the area.

"Ac­cess to time­ly, ef­fi­cient and high-qual­i­ty emer­gency health­care is fun­da­men­tal to the well­be­ing of any com­mu­ni­ty, and this de­vel­op­ment rep­re­sents a ma­jor step for­ward in strength­en­ing health­care ser­vices in Ari­ma," Ali said.

The Cham­ber said health­care in­vest­ment re­mains im­por­tant as Ari­ma con­tin­ues to ex­pand as a com­mer­cial, res­i­den­tial and trans­port hub.

It al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est in con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment agen­cies, health­care au­thor­i­ties and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to im­prove pub­lic ser­vices and qual­i­ty of life.