Rishard Khan 

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt 

Since the pan­dem­ic be­gan, de­mand has been high for the am­bu­lance ser­vice, which not on­ly trans­ports peo­ple from their homes to hos­pi­tals but is al­so used to trans­fer COVID-19 pa­tients with­in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. With cas­es steadi­ly in­creas­ing the ser­vice is be­gin­ning to feel the strain with pa­tients re­port­ed­ly wait­ing hours for an am­bu­lance. How­ev­er, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said on Wednes­day the Min­istry of Health has been at work try­ing to im­prove the ser­vice but the pub­lic’s help is need­ed. 

“It’s a de­mand is­sue. We are do­ing all in our part at the gov­ern­ment lev­el, the Min­istry of Health lev­el and RHA lev­el. But the onus is now on the pop­u­la­tion to please re­duce this de­mand giv­en the lim­it­ed sup­ply of am­bu­lances and oth­er re­sources,” she said at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence. 

“Re­duce this de­mand by please be­com­ing vac­ci­nat­ed. Let’s take the min­istry up on that of­fer of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed to pre­vent your­self or a loved one from hav­ing to con­tact the am­bu­lance to be trans­ferred to an ac­ci­dent and emer­gency (de­part­ment).” 

On Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia pub­lished a re­port that the Glob­al Med­ical Re­sponse of T&T (GM­RTT) am­bu­lance ser­vice is trans­port­ing up to 50 in­fect­ed pa­tients dai­ly to hos­pi­tals for med­ical at­ten­tion amidst the cur­rent in­crease. These are pri­mar­i­ly home to hos­pi­tal trans­ports. GM­RTT’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Paul An­der­son not­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of these trans­fers are un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. GM­RTT is one of the main am­bu­lance providers con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Health.