While the con­ver­sion of the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal was nec­es­sary to ac­com­mo­date the COVID-19 spike, more should be done to fa­cil­i­tate non-COVID pa­tients who have to jour­ney miles away from the penin­su­la to ac­cess health care.

So said Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh as he called on the Gov­ern­ment to utilise medics from the T&T De­fence Force, hire pri­vate med­ical per­son­nel as well as utilise re­tired doc­tors and nurs­es to boost the ex­ist­ing strained work­force.

In an in­ter­view, Teelucks­ingh al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the gov­ern­ment be­gin re­open­ing ex­ist­ing med­ical fa­cil­i­ties lo­cat­ed at Petrotrin’s base in Point Fortin, the Trin­mar med­ical fa­cil­i­ty as well as those in San­ta Flo­ra and Pe­nal/Bar­rack­pore which are cur­rent­ly aban­doned to treat non-COVID pa­tients re­quir­ing care for co­mor­bidi­ties.

“The Trin­mar med­ical fa­cil­i­ty would have at least three beds, ECG ma­chines, blood test­ing, pres­sure test­ing. Petrotrin Point Fortin had X-ray ma­chines, labs, a dis­pen­sary and al­so two beds. All of this is cur­rent­ly aban­doned. There was al­so a full com­ple­ment of med­ical per­son­nel, most of whom are in pri­vate prac­tice who could be re­hired to work at these fa­cil­i­ties,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He not­ed that trained medics and nurs­es are em­ployed with the T&T De­fence Force could be uti­lized at this time. 

“Why are we hav­ing these trained medics do­ing noth­ing when we need as many hands-on board as pos­si­ble,” Teelucks­ingh said. As COVID num­bers rise, Teelucks­ingh said ad­di­tion­al space has to be pro­vid­ed for step-down fa­cil­i­ties.

“We need to look at all our re­sources and find ad­di­tion­al hos­pi­tal space. The new Chatham Gov­ern­ment school could be trans­formed in­to a step-down fa­cil­i­ty while all the health cen­tres in the penin­su­la should be open 24/7 by bring­ing on board re­tired med­ical per­son­nel who could deal with non-COVID pa­tients. There are oth­er schools and build­ings owned by the State which could be used,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He added that while T&T was fight­ing a war against COVID and it was wise to al­so pro­vide health care to those with oth­er ail­ments.

Mean­while, for­mer med­ical di­rec­tor of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon, who has 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing in In­ten­sive Care Unit, said he was will­ing to help.

How­ev­er, he said al­though he plead­ed to as­sist with the COVID cri­sis, his calls have gone unan­swered.

“I have made re­peat­ed re­quests to per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Asif Ali, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health Dr Roshan Paras­ram and the Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to as­sist with the pan­dem­ic.”

—Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va