Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The com­ple­tion of the first phase of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in three to four months. This was con­firmed by South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) chair­man Va­lerie Al­leyne-Rawl­ins on Thurs­day.

She made the com­ment as she ac­com­pa­nied Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to the ma­ter­ni­ty ward in the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) to vis­it Box­ing Day and Christ­mas Day ba­bies and their moth­ers.

There were two ba­bies de­liv­ered on Box­ing Day at the SFGH, in­clud­ing Nathan Ameer Hug­gins—the first ba­by to be born in the pub­lic hos­pi­tals on Thurs­day at 1.17 am.

The six-pound, nine-ounce bounc­ing ba­by boy was born to Cou­va moth­er Zeni­far De­o­di­al, 22. She said her due date was De­cem­ber 30, but she be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing labour pains on Christ­mas Day. Six ba­bies were born at the SFGH on Christ­mas Day.

In an in­ter­view af­ter­wards, Guardian Me­dia asked for an up­date on the con­struc­tion works be­ing done at the SFGH.

The 100-year-old SFGH is one of three lega­cy hos­pi­tals, in­clud­ing the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works are on­go­ing.

Al­leyne-Rawl­ins said the providers have es­ti­mat­ed be­tween March and April for the com­ple­tion of ex­te­ri­or works and then work would be­gin at the wing ex­ten­sion and Phase Two, which would in­clude the up­grade of the wards.

Asked if she was sat­is­fied with the progress of the works, she said, “We would like to ac­cel­er­ate it, but they met with chal­lenges be­cause re­mem­ber, we are chang­ing a 1954 roof and they have to pay at­ten­tion to the reg­u­la­tion with re­spect to the roof­ing and as­bestos and all these things, so they are mak­ing sure that every­thing is safe be­fore we move…no­tice all the cau­tion tapes so, grad­u­al­ly we are get­ting there but we are be­hind time be­cause we had to move quick­ly with the can­cer cen­tre.”

Deyals­ingh de­clined to rate the per­for­mance of the pub­lic health sec­tor for this year.

“I will let the pub­lic de­cide that,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said they would con­tin­ue with their four ma­jor pol­i­cy projects in the new year. The min­is­ter said this in­cludes the re­duc­tion of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, the fur­ther im­ple­men­ta­tion of the non-re­mu­ner­a­ble blood do­na­tion sys­tem—tran­si­tion­ing from the chit sys­tem, the fur­ther de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of men­tal health fa­cil­i­ties and the at­tain­ment of their 95/95/95 tar­gets for HIV/Aids by 2030.

Deyals­ingh was asked whether they would treat dengue is­sues dif­fer­ent­ly in the new year based on pre­vi­ous pub­lic crit­i­cism.

“I think lessons are for the me­dia be­cause we start­ed prepar­ing this coun­try for dengue in Jan­u­ary but the me­dia fell in­to the trap that op­po­si­tion cor­po­ra­tions in south and east­ern were dri­ving the pub­lic to be­lieve that mos­qui­toes were breed­ing in dirty, mossy drains. But I told the pub­lic that the breed­ing of mos­qui­toes was in your house­hold, your yards where you have clean, clear stand­ing wa­ter, the me­dia kept on re­peat­ing those al­le­ga­tions that dengue was be­ing spread in dirty, mossy drains.”

He said it was re­gret­table that when the min­is­ter and min­istry speak they don’t get the kind of trac­tion as oth­er peo­ple who make front-page news. Go­ing for­ward, he said, he will con­tin­ue to urge the me­dia to fol­low the sci­ence.