The Min­istry of Health will spend over $100 mil­lion on the up­grade of hos­pi­tals and health fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try and on the pur­chase of equip­ment.

The fund­ing forms part of the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) which states that hos­pi­tal re­fur­bish­ment un­der­tak­ings are im­per­a­tive to en­sure that health fa­cil­i­ties re­main fit for pur­pose, to im­prove pa­tient and clin­i­cian ex­pe­ri­ence, to re­place out­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and to ex­pand clin­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty.

It notes that $45 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed for the Hos­pi­tal Re­fur­bish­ment Pro­gramme to fund the ex­e­cu­tion of var­i­ous im­prove­ment works by the four Re­gion­al Health Auh­tori­ties.

Some of the works to be un­der­tak­en are as fol­lows:

- au­toma­tion of load shed­ding of the elec­tri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC);

- up­grade of the dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­form­ers at the EWM­SC;

- ac­qui­si­tion/in­stal­la­tion of a new gen­er­a­tor at the EWM­SC;

- re­place­ment of four el­e­va­tors (with in­ter­com sys­tem) at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal;

- Pae­di­atric Crit­i­cal Care Unit for San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal;

- con­duct of ur­gent elec­tri­cal up­grade works at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) in sup­port of the new Cen­tral Block build­ing (rolled over from pre­vi­ous year);

- con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the re­fur­bish­ment and ex­pan­sion of the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (phas­es two and three rolled over from pre­vi­ous fis­cal);

- re­place­ment of perime­ter fenc­ing around fa­cil­i­ty and Nurs­es Quar­ters at the Cumana Out­reach Cen­tre; and

- ex­pan­sion of park­ing and up­grade of perime­ter fenc­ing at the To­co Health Cen­tre.

The doc­u­ment adds that in fis­cal 2023, the PSIP will con­tin­ue to pro­vide fund­ing to en­able the up­grade of med­ical equip­ment across the State’s health fa­cil­i­ties to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble pa­tient care.

A to­tal of $60 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the Med­ical Equip­ment Up­grade Pro­gramme which will fa­cil­i­tate the re­place­ment of out­dat­ed or non-func­tion­al ma­chines with new tech­nol­o­gy for in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy and the de­liv­ery of spe­cialised ser­vices.

Some of the equip­ment to be pur­chased in fis­cal 2023 are as fol­lows:

- ex­pan­sion of lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices at the St. Joseph En­hanced Health Cen­tre.

- two non-in­va­sive ven­ti­la­tors for the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal and 16 new portable ven­ti­la­tors for the EWM­SC.

- ten re­place­ment ICU beds for the EWM­SC.

- two au­top­sy ta­bles and two dis­sec­tion bench­es for the mor­tu­ary at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH).

- six gen­er­al X-ray units for the SFGH, the Ce­dros Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, the Point Fortin Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty and the San Fer­nan­do Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

- gen­er­al adult bed re­place­ment at SFGH (Phase two - 100 beds).

- six op­er­at­ing the­atre ta­bles for POS­GH and St James Med­ical Com­plex.

- ten sy­ringe pumps for the Neona­tal De­part­ment at the POS­GH.

- three neona­tal re­sus­ci­ta­tion units for the Neona­tal De­part­ment at the POS­GH.

- mi­nor med­ical equip­ment for the var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties through­out the Coun­ty of St An­drew/St David.

- ex­pan­sion of the ra­di­ol­o­gy in­for­ma­tion sys­tem and pic­ture archiv­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem.