Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Un­di­ag­nosed di­a­betes, un­con­trolled hy­per­ten­sion and men­tal health chal­lenges re­main among the health con­cerns af­fect­ing in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies across Trinidad and To­ba­go, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lakram Bo­doe has said.

Bo­doe said greater em­pha­sis must be placed on pre­ven­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion and ac­cess to qual­i­ty health­care to ad­dress these chal­lenges and im­prove the na­tion’s over­all health and well-be­ing.

Speak­ing at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (NCRHA) Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, on Mon­day, Bo­doe said a na­tion’s pros­per­i­ty should not be mea­sured sole­ly by its eco­nom­ic achieve­ments, but al­so by the health and well-be­ing of its pop­u­la­tion.

The min­is­ter said many of the coun­try’s health chal­lenges were not im­me­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble but could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for in­di­vid­u­als and their fam­i­lies if left un­de­tect­ed or un­treat­ed.

Draw­ing on the sig­nif­i­cance of Di­vali, he said the fes­ti­val’s teach­ings rep­re­sent­ed pros­per­i­ty and well-be­ing, but al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of right­eous­ness, gen­eros­i­ty and com­pas­sion.

He said these val­ues were par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to the health­care sec­tor, where work­ers were re­quired to demon­strate com­pas­sion and com­mit­ment while car­ing for peo­ple at their most vul­ner­a­ble.

Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tion of doc­tors, nurs­es, al­lied health pro­fes­sion­als, ad­min­is­tra­tive per­son­nel and sup­port staff across the NCRHA’s fa­cil­i­ties.

He said health­care work­ers fre­quent­ly made sig­nif­i­cant sac­ri­fices, work­ing long hours, re­spond­ing to emer­gen­cies and sup­port­ing fam­i­lies dur­ing dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.

“In many ways, you are the light in some­one’s mo­ment of dark­ness,” he told the gath­er­ing.

Bo­doe urged NCRHA em­ploy­ees to al­low the val­ues of Di­vali to in­spire them to ap­proach their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with re­newed pur­pose and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to im­prove the health­care ex­pe­ri­ence of pa­tients.

NCRHA chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had record­ed a his­toric mile­stone with 15 op­er­at­ing the­atres func­tion­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly across three ma­jor hos­pi­tals.

Gopeesingh said the achieve­ment rep­re­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant progress in the board’s ef­forts over the past year to re­store health fa­cil­i­ties, strength­en sup­port ser­vices and ex­pand ac­cess to treat­ment.

The 15 op­er­at­ing the­atres were in use at the EWM­SC, Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal and Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal. Gopeesingh said the ex­pan­sion of sur­gi­cal ca­pac­i­ty was in­tend­ed to re­duce wait­ing lists and pro­vide pa­tients with ear­li­er ac­cess to treat­ment.

He said the NCRHA record­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.2 mil­lion pa­tient vis­its an­nu­al­ly across its hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres.

Of that fig­ure, near­ly 300,000 were emer­gency vis­its to fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing the EWM­SC, Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal and the Ch­agua­nas and Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ties.

Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty’s achieve­ments de­pend­ed on the con­tri­bu­tion of its en­tire work­force, in­clud­ing clin­i­cal, ad­min­is­tra­tive and tech­ni­cal per­son­nel, as well as em­ploy­ees in se­cu­ri­ty, main­te­nance, trans­port, clean­ing, cater­ing, laun­dry and oth­er sup­port de­part­ments.

He paid trib­ute to the staff, in­clud­ing those who were on du­ty dur­ing the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions, say­ing their col­lec­tive ef­forts made the de­liv­ery of health­care pos­si­ble.

The pro­gramme fea­tured the tal­ents of NCRHA staff and their fam­i­ly mem­bers.