DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TTNNA) has is­sued a warn­ing to the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA), threat­en­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion if it fails to de­cen­tralise health­care and shut down the 122-year-old St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.

The warn­ing was is­sued by TTNNA first vice pres­i­dent Avion Dray­ton-Bai­ley and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Corey Dil­lon dur­ing an in­ter­view out­side the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

The TTNNA is par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ed with Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s fail­ure to fol­low through on his com­mit­ment to de­com­mis­sion the age­ing men­tal health fa­cil­i­ty, which has been in op­er­a­tion since 1902 and cur­rent­ly hous­es ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 live-in pa­tients.

“We are short-staffed of nurs­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore we do not re­al­ly en­cour­age the nurs­es to come out when we can rec­ti­fy the is­sue be­hind closed doors. But we are say­ing now that enough is enough. We are say­ing that you all don’t val­ue our con­ver­sa­tions and we are say­ing that if noth­ing con­tin­ues to hap­pen, then we will have to es­ca­late to the next step,” said Dray­ton-Bai­ley, keep­ing the specifics of the union’s next steps un­der wraps.

Re­cent footage shared by the union re­vealed trou­bling con­di­tions at St Ann’s. One clip showed a treat­ment room with hu­man waste drip­ping from a dam­aged sew­er line above the kitchen sink, while rat drop­pings lit­tered the floor near the med­i­cine cab­i­net. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, an­oth­er room was seen more drop­pings along­side pooled sew­er­age. Out­side, stag­nant rain­wa­ter in a buck­et and clogged gut­ters cre­at­ed a breed­ing ground for mos­qui­toes.

Dray­ton-Bai­ley de­tailed oth­er se­ri­ous is­sues, say­ing, “We have many cracked toi­lets so there­fore if the pa­tient has to use the toi­let, you find that when they flush the wa­ter is leak­ing out on­to the ground. Some of the toi­let bowls, they don’t have cov­ers. You find that you have leak­ing roofs, break­ing down roofs. There’s one unit where the nurs­es have to use a toi­let on the out­side be­cause theirs has been con­demned.”

The TTNNA, pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA), claims it has raised these con­cerns with the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA) for years.

Mean­while, re­flect­ing on World Men­tal Health Day ac­tiv­i­ties last week, Dil­lon ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the min­istry’s in­ac­tion re­gard­ing staff wel­fare at St Ann’s.

“We need to demon­strate as a coun­try that we are se­ri­ous about men­tal health­care, men­tal health aware­ness. We know that glob­al­ly, the push is for de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of men­tal health ser­vices and there has been some push by the Gov­ern­ment to have fa­cil­i­ties in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, but the vol­ume of per­sons re­quir­ing ser­vices, these small satel­lite ar­eas can­not meet the de­mand so St Ann’s re­mains the fo­cal point of men­tal health in Trinidad and To­ba­go and as such, we need it for the nurs­es and pa­tients. We just want per­sons in au­thor­i­ty to back up their words with ac­tion,” he em­pha­sised.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, NWRHA CEO An­tho­ny Blake said de­com­mis­sion­ing St Ann’s de­pend­ed on oth­er re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties es­tab­lish­ing their men­tal health fa­cil­i­ties.

“That will al­low the oth­er RHAs to take some of the bur­den off of the NWRHA as the fo­cal point for men­tal health. And as the de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion ef­forts ramp up, that will give North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­cant St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal, at least cer­tain wings of the hos­pi­tal, on a phased ba­sis and be able to re­fur­bish those ar­eas,” he ex­plained.

He not­ed that past re­pairs had been made and said on­go­ing ef­forts were made to ad­dress is­sues such as leak­ing roofs and pest con­trol us­ing funds from the last fis­cal pack­age.

“One al­so needs to un­der­stand that a men­tal health fa­cil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly the area and how spa­cious, and the pa­tient ac­com­mo­da­tion in terms of toi­lets and so on, is some­thing that re­quires con­stant at­ten­tion,” he said.

“I’ll give an ex­am­ple— we have a ded­i­cat­ed plumb­ing team at the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal, and they will go in, do a project to fix toi­lets and so on and the pa­tients them­selves, we’ve had pa­tients de­stroy toi­let bowls, mash­ing up the seats, mash­ing up the bowls, rip­ping the plumb­ing out of the wall, rip­ping out elec­tri­cal out­lets. So, they’ve had to come up with very cre­ative ways to hide and to mask the plumb­ing and to pro­tect the plumb­ing in­fra­struc­ture be­cause at times, the pa­tients them­selves on the ward are the per­sons, af­ter we fix it, that de­stroy the plumb­ing,” he added.

Blake al­so high­light­ed the short­age of men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als in T&T.

Al­though the Min­istry of Health was al­lo­cat­ed $7.5 bil­lion for 2025, no funds have been ear­marked for the de­com­mis­sion­ing of St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal.

In 2019, dur­ing the bud­get de­bate, how­ev­er, Deyals­ingh promised the hos­pi­tal would be de­com­mis­sioned but did not spec­i­fy a time­line. He men­tioned plans for a new fa­cil­i­ty sup­port­ed by satel­lite cen­tres to rein­te­grate fam­i­lies. When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, he di­rect­ed in­quiries to the NWRHA CEO.

Di­rec­tor of Men­tal Health Hazel Oth­el­lo al­so re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue, say­ing all in­quiries should go through the min­istry com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment for an of­fi­cial re­sponse.