Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt 

For the first time in re­cent his­to­ry, the health sec­tor has re­ceived the largest por­tion of the na­tion­al Bud­get with an al­lo­ca­tion of $7.571 bil­lion.

The Health Min­istry has typ­i­cal­ly re­ceived ei­ther the sec­ond or third high­est al­lo­ca­tion from the Bud­get, be­hind na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion/skills train­ing.

In the 2019-2020 bud­get, health re­ceived the third-high­est al­lo­ca­tion. At the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, for the 2021-2022 bud­get, the al­lo­ca­tion of $6.395 bil­lion fell to sec­ond place be­hind ed­u­ca­tion which re­ceived $6.886 bil­lion. 

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert out­lined sev­er­al ini­tia­tives for the new fis­cal year in­clud­ing a re­vamped digi­ti­sa­tion pro­gramme.

In this project, Im­bert not­ed that a uni­fied health record sys­tem will be in­tro­duced which would al­low for easy ac­cess to pa­tients’ med­ical records to op­ti­mise in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ties. This is ex­pect­ed to be done by De­cem­ber 2025.

Re­fer­ring to on­go­ing works at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block, Im­bert added that the fa­cil­i­ty is at 60 per cent com­ple­tion and is ex­pect­ed to en­hance op­er­a­tions in clin­i­cal, sur­gi­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­part­ments.

On the is­sue of past hos­pi­tal works, Im­bert re­port­ed that the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal cost $1.6 bil­lion, the Pt Fortin Hos­pi­tal cost $1.3 bil­lion, the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal cost $133 mil­lion and the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal cost $1.1 bil­lion.

The al­lo­ca­tion came months af­ter Im­bert lament­ed that the cost of health­care ex­po­nen­tial­ly in­creased over the last 20 years.

He not­ed that it was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to fi­nance the pur­chase of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Im­bert made the re­marks dur­ing a sit­ting of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in June, where a sup­ple­men­ta­tion of $495,286,000 was ap­proved for the Health Min­istry for the 2023-2024 bud­get.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Im­bert re­port­ed that over 265,000 peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed from the CDAP pro­gramme at a cost of $190 mil­lion be­tween 2021 to 2024.

Don’t for­get nurs­ing staff

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia short­ly af­ter the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, gen­er­al coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal Oral Saun­ders said he was cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that the size­able al­lo­ca­tion would im­prove the lives of nurs­es.

He al­so re­mind­ed those in au­thor­i­ty to pri­ori­tise the needs of med­ical staff, not­ing the high-stress en­vi­ron­ment they work.

“Health­care work­ers came through dur­ing the worst pan­dem­ic in re­cent times but in spite of this, we con­tin­ue to lan­guish un­der 2013 salaries.

“We are grate­ful the al­lo­ca­tion has been met be­cause we recog­nise the na­tion’s health is crit­i­cal to the na­tion’s fu­ture.

“We re­al­ly want to give the best of our­selves but we can on­ly do that once we have what we need to do our jobs,” Saun­ders said, who was al­so for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the PSA.

Hours be­fore the 2025 Bud­get was read, vice pres­i­dent for the TT Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Avion Dray­ton-Bai­ley ap­peared on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme say­ing there was a glob­al short­age of three mil­lion nurs­es. 

“We have a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad with our nurs­ing per­son­nel. No mat­ter what hap­pens to any­body else, what job they have, at some point in time peo­ple get sick and they re­quire the ser­vices of a nurse so, there­fore, I would re­al­ly like to see the bud­get this time fo­cus on train­ing of nurs­es, en­sur­ing there is ad­e­quate staffing.”