Chester Sam­bra­no

The Min­istry of Health not­ed what it called the in­flam­ma­to­ry state­ments made by Wen­dell Ever­s­ley con­cern­ing Dr Avinash Sawh and the al­le­ga­tions of racial bias on the part of the Min­is­ter, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

In a video post yes­ter­day, Ever­s­ley re­ferred to a med­ical in­tern who was dis­missed af­ter us­ing a deroga­to­ry term and ques­tioned why Dr Sawh has not been stripped of his li­cence.

How­ev­er, In a me­dia re­lease to­day the Min­istry clar­i­fied that med­ical in­terns fall un­der its purview and in the past in­ci­dents in­volv­ing in­terns, the dis­ci­pli­nary process was ini­ti­at­ed by the Min­istry.

It added that af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of all the rel­e­vant facts and the terms of the In­tern Agree­ment, the in­terns all had sim­i­lar out­comes.

"Mr Ever­s­ley ref­er­enced on­ly one in­tern," the Min­istry said.

The Min­istry said, in ac­cor­dance with all the for­mer in­terns’ rights to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, no de­tails of these mat­ters will be dis­cussed in the pub­lic do­main."

How­ev­er, it said in re­la­tion to Dr Avinash Sawh, dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters con­cern­ing doc­tors in pri­vate prac­tice fall un­der the re­mit of the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go and not the Min­istry of Health.

"There­fore, any ques­tions on the out­come of that in­quiry should be put to the Med­ical Board.

In fact, when the mat­ter arose, the Min­istry of Health lodged its com­plaint with the Med­ical Board," it said.

The Min­istry said, there­fore, it is rather un­for­tu­nate that these facts were not checked by Mr Ever­s­ley pri­or to his "in­flam­ma­to­ry re­marks which the Min­istry con­demns, giv­en its im­pli­ca­tions."