RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter to re­port on COVID-19 pa­tient care and out­comes has giv­en the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem a pass­ing grade. How­ev­er, it raised con­cerns about staff short­ages and burnout.

"We found that the ad­mis­sions, dis­charge and trans­fer poli­cies for COVID-19 pa­tients are with­in the am­bit of in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice es­pe­cial­ly as rec­om­mend­ed by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO)," the re­port said.

It added: "We found that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the poli­cies dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic were ham­pered by un­pre­dictable staff short­ages and staff burn-out. We rec­om­mend that close at­ten­tion needs to be paid to staff morale as well as pur­chas­es of some con­sum­ables."

The 105-page re­port end­ed by list­ing 16 rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment. These in­clud­ed a for­mal sur­vey of COVID-19 pa­tients' rel­a­tives; procur­ing more Tocilizum­ab; im­prov­ing tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tions for pa­tients; more em­pa­thy from staff to pa­tients; more em­pha­sis on pa­tient com­mu­ni­ca­tion to fam­i­lies; and a need for ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion and pre­ven­tion of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, among oth­ers.

The com­mit­tee was head­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Pro­fes­sor Ter­ence Seemu­n­gal. The oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee are the for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences Prof Emeri­ta Phyl­lis Pitt-Miller, pub­lic health spe­cial­ist Dr An­ton Cum­ber­batch, con­sul­tant anaes­thetist and in­ten­sive care spe­cial­ist Dr Vidya Dean and Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Cen­tre for Health Sys­tems, Re­search and De­vel­op­ment, Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences Prof Don­ald Sime­on.