KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are re­ject­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to give pow­er to a Min­is­ter of Health to re­view, an­nul and over­turn de­ci­sions of the Board of Man­age­ment of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Au­thor­i­ty.

While sup­port of the con­cept of the ex­pan­sion of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund was un­di­vid­ed by sen­a­tors on both sides of the bench as well as in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors yes­ter­day, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment can help chil­dren in oth­er ways that does not in­volve po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Dur­ing his first con­tri­bu­tion as a re­turn­ing in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor yes­ter­day, Teemal was one of eight sen­a­tors who ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s amend­ments which al­so in­clud­ed al­low­ing a US$500,000 grant in­crease and move to re­cruit for­eign spe­cial­ists to treat with the sick chil­dren lo­cal­ly.

Teemal said grant­i­ng uni­lat­er­al re­view au­thor­i­ty to the min­is­ter can have con­se­quences in­clud­ing politi­cis­ing med­ical case as well as pos­si­bly un­der­min­ing the in­de­pen­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Act Board.

He al­so said this au­thor­i­ty can open doors to lob­by­ing and favouritism, re­al or per­ceived, and can al­so re­strict fu­ture pos­si­ble do­na­tions on the ba­sis of trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

In­stead of giv­ing a health min­is­ter the au­thor­i­ty to over­turn the board’s de­ci­sion where an ap­pli­ca­tion has been re­ject­ed for a grant un­der the Act, Teemal sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish two oth­er re­view boards.

Teemal sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish a small Chil­dren’s Life Fund Ap­peals tri­bunal to hear ap­peals of re­ject­ed ap­pli­cants.

He said, “I’m propos­ing that one pos­si­ble al­ter­na­tive can be to es­tab­lish a small in­de­pen­dent Chil­dren’s Life Fund ap­peals tri­bunal through leg­is­la­tion or reg­u­la­tion. Com­po­si­tion of this tri­bunal can be a re­tired judge or se­nior at­tor­ney as chair, a pae­di­atric health­care pro­fes­sion­al not af­fil­i­at­ed with the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Au­thor­i­ty and a so­cial wel­fare or child wel­fare ad­vo­ca­cy rep­re­sen­ta­tive. This tri­bunal can hear ap­peals from ap­pli­cants, re­view de­ci­sions based on med­ical, fi­nan­cial and pro­ce­dur­al cri­te­ria and is­sue bind­ing or ad­vi­so­ry rul­ings de­pend­ing on le­gal frame­work. This would pro­mote im­par­tial­i­ty and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, main­tain in­tegri­ty of the funds gov­ern­ment struc­ture, and re­duce the risk of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence or per­cep­tion there­of. An ap­peals tri­bunal could be sup­ple­ment­ed by the cre­ation of an ex­ter­nal med­ical re­view com­mit­tee to ac­cess ur­gent, com­plex or re­ject­ed cas­es.”

He al­so sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish a statu­to­ry emer­gency med­ical re­view pan­el to treat with ur­gency of cas­es.

Teemal said, “An­oth­er pos­si­ble op­tion of this pow­ers to the min­is­ter is es­tab­lish­ing, I’m sug­gest­ing, of a statu­to­ry emer­gency med­ical re­view pan­el. This pan­el can be com­posed of three to five in­de­pen­dent pae­di­atric or emer­gency med­ical spe­cial­ists ap­point­ed by the pres­i­dent, med­ical board or cab­i­net ap­proved nom­i­na­tions. The pan­el would be ac­ti­vat­ed when a case meets de­fined ur­gent or ex­cep­tion­al cri­te­ria. Its role would be to ac­cess the med­ical ur­gency and rec­om­mend im­me­di­ate ap­proval to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Act board. Pan­el de­ci­sions could be logged and re­port­ed month­ly to the full board for trans­paren­cy. This pan­el can be con­vened with­in 24 to 48 hours, so the ques­tion of ur­gency and emer­gency and the time that we’re con­cerned about would be ad­dressed. So, it en­sures speed. Trans­paren­cy would be high with doc­u­ment­ed, de­fence­able de­ci­sion parts as com­pared to a uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion of a min­is­ter. Checks and bal­ances would be high­ly present with such an emer­gency re­view board rather than the ab­sence of checks and bal­ances that would re­side with the min­is­ter in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance. Med­ical in­tegri­ty would be pre­served,” he added.