Loyse Vin­cent

There are no H1N1 (Swine Flu) re­lat­ed deaths in To­ba­go. This is in spite of me­dia re­ports, which claim that there have been one con­firmed and an­oth­er sus­pect­ed case linked to the virus on the is­land.

Deputy chief sec­re­tary and Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Joel Jack chaired this week’s Post- Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Me­dia Brief­ing where he said that he has been com­mu­ni­cat­ing di­rect­ly with the sec­re­tary of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Dr Agatha Car­ring­ton on sev­er­al health-re­lat­ed is­sues.

When asked to con­firm the re­port Jack said he was “not aware” of any H1N1 deaths in To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, calls and mes­sages to Car­ring­ton for a re­sponse on the is­sue were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, op­er­a­tions at the Dial­y­sis Unit of the Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tre re­sumed yes­ter­day.

Car­ring­ton vis­it­ed the staff of the Dial­y­sis Unit to as­sist in the speedy res­o­lu­tion of the out­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced at the unit. Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the di­vi­sion, “as of Wednes­day No­vem­ber 6, 2019, some staff re­turned to work and treat­ment of pa­tients has re­sumed. Fur­ther­more, pa­tients will be as­sessed by clin­i­cians and arrange­ments will be made for high-risk pa­tients to be treat­ed at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad.”

The re­lease said cor­rec­tive works are be­ing un­der­tak­en, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of the ex­trac­tor fan and Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI) has been en­gaged to as­sess the air qual­i­ty of the unit and will sub­mit a re­port at the end of the as­sess­ment.

Checks with pa­tients who were un­able to re­ceive dial­y­sis treat­ment on Mon­day and Tues­day re­vealed that ser­vice at the unit re­sumed yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, a few pa­tients had to have their ses­sions resched­uled as the unit can on­ly ac­com­mo­date six per­sons per ses­sion.