KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has asked Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to look in­to al­le­ga­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

Bo­doe asked about the process for en­gag­ing un­em­ployed doc­tors dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the 2024 Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Deyals­ingh ac­knowl­edged there were un­em­ployed physi­cians in his pre­sen­ta­tion, say­ing there was a sat­u­ra­tion of ju­nior doc­tors.

Bo­doe said ju­nior doc­tors got promis­es of job se­cu­ri­ty for work­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic but most went from re­ceiv­ing one-year agree­ments to locum con­tracts with­out rea­son. This, he said, means the doc­tors have no va­ca­tion days or sick leave and get low­er pay with­out gra­tu­ity and al­so di­min­ish­es their chances of ac­cess­ing loans.

He said there are al­le­ga­tions of re­pres­sion, and those who speak out be­ing­trans­ferred or forced to re­sign. He asked if the NCRHA’s most se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tor does not have to re­port to Deyals­ingh.

“I want to fur­ther ask the Min­is­ter of Health, through you, Madame Speak­er, to in­ves­ti­gate claims that at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, con­tracts were award­ed to cer­tain ju­nior doc­tors ahead of those in line with longer ser­vice be­cause they have friends in man­age­ment and oth­er high places. I was just told this, Madame Speak­er. I am just ask­ing the ques­tion. Sure­ly this can­not be the pol­i­cy of the NCRHA or in­deed at any oth­er RHA,” Bo­doe said.

Bo­doe said al­though Deyals­ingh had boast­ed about nu­mer­ous med­ical pro­grammes, there are still pub­lic com­plaints and me­dia re­ports about the poor main­te­nance of med­ical equip­ment, which of­ten re­sults in the post­pone­ment of surg­eries.

Look­ing at the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) al­lo­ca­tion for med­ical equip­ment up­grades for the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), he said there was a list of equip­ment for re­place­ment. Bo­doe said while he likes to see al­lo­ca­tions for new equip­ment, he did not see the Pha­coemul­si­fi­ca­tion ma­chines doc­tors re­quest­ed for cataract surg­eries and there was no men­tion of how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to deal with the back­log of those surg­eries.

A Guardian Me­dia re­port from Ju­ly showed that 200 cataract pa­tients were await­ing surgery at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH), as the two Pha­coemul­si­fi­ca­tion ma­chines had bro­ken down. Bo­doe said the SWRHA re­paired the old ma­chines but doc­tors found them un­safe.

Al­though the SWRHA ad­ver­tised ten­ders for re­place­ments with a dead­line of Au­gust 25, Bo­doe said cataract surg­eries are yet to re­sume. He asked whether it was true that stake­hold­ers at the SFGH got a re­quest to mod­i­fy the spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the ma­chines to fa­cil­i­tate a par­tic­u­lar sup­pli­er.

“I have been re­li­ably in­formed that the de­lay in pro­cure­ment of these two ma­chines is be­cause this is what is hap­pen­ing, so I just throw this out for an an­swer. If I look at the SWRHA PSIP al­lo­ca­tion, I see no men­tion of the Pha­coemul­si­fi­ca­tion ma­chine, so I take it the Min­istry of Health is tak­ing it up­on it­self to pro­cure these two ma­chines and dis­burse them to the RHA,” he said.

Bo­doe said all the pro­grammes dis­cussed by Deyals­ingh re­quire ad­e­quate staff. He not­ed the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s rec­om­men­da­tion was 4.45 doc­tors, nurs­es and mid­wives per 1,000 pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, up to 2021, there was a ra­tio of one doc­tor, nurse and mid­wife per 1,000 pop­u­la­tion. Of 17,682 jobs across four RHAs, 37.6 per cent of es­tab­lished po­si­tions were va­cant up to 2021.

“So Madame Speak­er, again, one would have ex­pect­ed and hoped the Ho­n­ourable Mem­ber for St Joseph would have come with some sort of plan to tell us what the Gov­ern­ment was go­ing to do to ad­dress this short­age in the health sec­tor.”

He said min­istry da­ta pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment showed 24 va­can­cies in ra­di­ol­o­gy, 54 in lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices, four in sup­ply chain man­age­ment, and nine in qual­i­ty im­prove­ment at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.