East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt, is be­ing hailed as one of the finest minds in the lo­cal health sec­tor.

Tsoi-a-Fatt died on Tues­day af­ter a pro­longed ill­ness.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh paid trib­ute to Tsoi-a-Fatt. He de­scribed him as a ma­jor fig­ure in the de­vel­op­ment of the health­care sec­tor, with ex­pe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship span­ning decades across both is­lands.

The Health Min­is­ter said, “I was per­son­al­ly grate­ful that he lived to see the ful­fil­ment of his dream of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus project, which was re­cent­ly com­plet­ed. We who work in the health sec­tor will miss his lead­er­ship, com­pas­sion, and pres­ence.”

He added that he was sad­dened by the loss.

For­mer San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am al­so paid trib­ute. He said Tsoi-a-Fatt was se­ri­ous about his job and what it meant to peo­ple.

He said, “Mr Tsoi-a-Fatt was more than a CEO in the eyes of the pub­lic and staff. He took his job very per­son­al­ly, as if the ER­HA was his very own com­pa­ny.”

Juter­am added, “He was the brain­child be­hind and the most im­por­tant fig­ure in lob­by­ing for and bring­ing a state-of-the-art new San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus to the re­gion. Un­der his watch, we saw im­prove­ments in all health cen­tres from Ma­yaro, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, To­co, San­gre Grande, and the new San­gre Grande En­hanced Health Cen­tre.”

Tsoi-a-Fatt al­so served as CEO of the North Cen­tral Health Au­thor­i­ty, among oth­er pub­lic roles.
His most re­cent term with the ER­HA be­gan in De­cem­ber 2017 and con­tin­ued un­til his pass­ing. Be­fore that, he served in the post from 2005 to 2009.
He was al­so award­ed the Min­istry of Health Di­rec­tor’s Award for Qual­i­ty Lead­er­ship in 2008.

Tsoi-a-Fatt was al­so the man­ag­er of health plan­ning and chief ad­min­is­tra­tive man­ag­er in the Min­istry of Health.

In his role as man­ag­er of health plan­ning, Tsoi-a-Fatt was re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion with oth­er coun­tries and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).
His fu­ner­al is sched­uled to take place next Tues­day.