The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) is call­ing for a com­plete over­haul of the health sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with the cur­rent strate­gies be­ing em­ployed in the fight against Covid 19.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, NJAC warns of “an im­pend­ing dis­as­ter in the health sec­tor”.

“The na­tion is present­ly wit­ness­ing a wors­en­ing health cri­sis, with De­cem­ber be­ing record­ed as the dead­liest month and an in­creas­ing num­ber of hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion and deaths of ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons. This means, as it stands, the ap­proach be­ing tak­en at present, has been found want­i­ng,” NJAC says.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion be­lieves Gov­ern­ment must change its strat­e­gy in bat­tling the pan­dem­ic, with one ma­jor step be­ing to:

“…im­me­di­ate­ly with­draw the safe zone pol­i­cy for Pub­lic Ser­vice/Pub­lic Sec­tor work­ers and em­bark on a process of na­tion­al mo­bil­i­sa­tion and con­sul­ta­tion with var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the labour move­ment.”

NJAC al­so made rec­om­men­da­tions to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lems of the health care sys­tem in a man­ner to sup­port and re­duce the de­spair health work­ers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing:

●     A reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of all nurs­es and doc­tors on con­tract and the seek­ing of sup­ple­men­tal staff from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

●     A re­call of re­tired nurs­es and mid­wives, who should be placed on short term con­tracts.

●     Pro­vi­sion of a Spe­cial Haz­ard Al­lowance or sim­i­lar ben­e­fit for health care work­ers.

●     At­tempts to se­cure ad­di­tion­al spe­cial­ly trained ICU per­son­nel to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty at all ICU de­part­ments.