Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing ahead with plans to open the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal and may re­cruit for­eign nurs­es if need­ed.

He said the fa­cil­i­ty, equipped since 2015, will be com­mis­sioned in phas­es, start­ing with staff re­lo­ca­tion and new re­cruit­ment.

While hun­dreds of doc­tors are cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed, Dr Bo­doe said ad­di­tion­al nurs­es will be re­quired, and once the lo­cal labour pool is de­plet­ed, con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to sourc­ing nurs­es in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The health min­is­ter main­tains the 230-bed Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, with MRI and CT Scan units, can­not be left idle and will help ease the health sys­tem’s bur­den.

“There are va­can­cies for doc­tors,” the min­is­ter not­ed. “I have asked the RHA's to pro­vide a list­ing of those va­can­cies ... There are many doc­tors who are look­ing for po­si­tions.”

Min­is­ter Bo­doe al­so said one of the ma­jor chal­lenges he in­her­it­ed was a $500 mil­lion debt owed to sup­pli­ers, which has to be cleared as soon as pos­si­ble.