CHARLES KONG SOO

For over 60 years, the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre in Wood­brook has served as a home for phys­i­cal­ly hand­i­capped chil­dren.

The com­pound con­tains a mod­ern op­er­at­ing the­atre, dor­mi­to­ries, out­pa­tient clin­ic, or­thopaedic work­shop and ex­pan­sive grounds that can be used for sports and fam­i­ly days. The cen­tre al­so of­fers pri­ma­ry school­ing, oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py and speech ther­a­py.

Chil­dren with spinal and oth­er phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties from T&T and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries are al­so tak­en to the cen­tre for cor­rec­tive surgery.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian af­ter he had just per­formed an op­er­a­tion on a pa­tient, chief or­thopaedic sur­geon at the cen­tre, Dr David To­by, spoke of their labour of love, which is done free of charge.

“We have two op­er­at­ing ses­sions per week, one for sco­l­io­sis and oth­er de­for­mi­ties on Tues­days and Thurs­days and two clin­ics where any­one can come free of charge Mon­days and Fri­days,” he said.

“One sco­l­io­sis surgery takes six hours com­pared to do­ing four or five oth­er less in­ten­sive op­er­a­tions on Thurs­days. Sur­gi­cal ser­vices at the cen­tre are free, the chil­dren’s par­ents are asked to make a nom­i­nal do­na­tion to the home to off­set run­ning costs com­pared to nurs­ing homes. We don’t turn any­body away; if they don’t have the mon­ey they can al­ways work out some­thing.”

He said the cen­tre has state-of-the-art equip­ment and some of the top sur­geons in the world, among them Dr Vin­cent Ar­let, Chief of Or­thopaedic Spine Ser­vices at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and Trinidad-born Dr Ed­ward Abra­ham from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Hos­pi­tal, of­fer their ser­vices for free. To­by said Ar­let comes two or three times a year to work with him and Abra­ham had been com­ing for around 20 years.

He said the cen­tre acts as a hub and tends to all the chil­dren who have spinal and oth­er de­for­mi­ties such as cere­bral pal­sy, Blount’s dis­ease, spina bi­fi­da and club feet from here, Grena­da, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia.

Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre CEO Jan Sir­jus­ingh said there are cur­rent­ly 45 chil­dren at the school, which is un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. She said there were some chil­dren who stayed in the home’s three dor­mi­to­ries, which can house 25 to 30 of them.

Sir­jus­ingh said the chil­dren do not come from aban­doned or abused homes, but from very lov­ing fam­i­lies. Par­ents bring their chil­dren on Mon­day morn­ing to school where they stay un­til Fri­day, then are tak­en home for the week­end. She em­pha­sised there was very tight 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty with more than 50 CCTV cam­eras to en­sure their charges’ safe­ty be­cause it was a mas­sive com­pound.

Sir­jus­ingh said chil­dren from To­ba­go or very dis­tant ar­eas in Trinidad, where their par­ents can’t come for them every month, were al­so ac­com­mo­dat­ed. She said the school worked with the nor­mal cur­ricu­lum and al­so had spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers. The school al­so has a vo­ca­tion­al cen­tre, but they are look­ing for vol­un­teers to help teach ar­eas like hair­dress­ing, tai­lor­ing and art be­cause the chil­dren are tal­ent­ed.

How­ev­er, Sir­jus­ingh said the teach­ers can do on­ly so much, not­ing they can on­ly take five or six chil­dren at a time as some had con­di­tions such as cere­bral pal­sy and can’t sit still.

Pres­i­dent of cen­tre, Dr Calvin In­als­ingh, says the fa­cil­i­ty was start­ed fol­low­ing a gift from the then fu­ture Queen of Eng­land, Princess Eliz­a­beth, in 1953. Ini­tial­ly it of­fered treat­ment for chil­dren af­fect­ed with Po­liomyelitis, which was the main cause of de­for­mi­ties in chil­dren at that time. He said over the years po­lio was brought un­der con­trol by ef­fi­cient vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes and the cen­tre shift­ed fo­cus to sur­gi­cal care and ac­com­mo­da­tion for chil­dren af­fect­ed with oth­er dis­abil­i­ties.

In­als­ingh said the free op­er­a­tions were start­ed by Dr ELS “Bus­ta” Robert­son and tak­en over by To­by a few years ago. He said they al­so start­ed op­er­a­tions on chil­dren with de­fects of the hand through Dr God­frey Arau­jo.

Not­ing it could be said that they had moved from a chil­dren’s home to a fa­cil­i­ty where state-of-the-art” op­er­a­tions are per­formed on chil­dren with skele­tal (bone) de­fects, In­als­ingh said they de­vised a strate­gic plan in ac­cor­dance with Min­istry of Health in 2010 for the cen­tre and had fol­lowed it to the let­ter.

He de­scribed Sir­jus­ingh was “God sent” to the cen­tre, not­ing she goes be­yond her du­ties to en­sure the home is run smooth­ly and that they raise funds through do­na­tions. In­als­ingh said all the board mem­bers give their ser­vice free and they were blessed to have doc­tors, lawyers, ac­coun­tants, Ro­tary Club Port-of-Spain mem­bers and mem­bers ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent and and Min­istry of Health on the coun­cil.

He said the cen­tre’s staff was like a fam­i­ly work­ing to­wards the ben­e­fit of the chil­dren, but they had their prob­lems as any oth­er reg­u­lat­ed fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, In­als­ingh said it was his plea­sure to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the cen­tre for over 30 years and pres­i­dent for about 15 years.