Akash Sama­roo

The North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) is seek­ing to as­sure staff at St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal that their wa­ter is­sues are be­ing ad­dressed.

Yes­ter­day staff mem­bers claimed that a low wa­ter pres­sure has made it near­ly im­pos­si­ble to keep cer­tain pa­tients hy­gien­ic and hy­drat­ed. They said the prob­lem is par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pound­ed on wards 12 and 13 that house pa­tients they cat­e­gorised as “men­tal­ly sub­nor­mal chil­dren.”

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), men­tal sub­nor­mal­i­ty is de­fined as in­com­plete or in­suf­fi­cient gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment of men­tal ca­pac­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia was told that some of these pa­tients could not do any­thing for them­selves and would of­ten play in their own fae­ces, if left un­at­tend­ed. One work­er said it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and near­ly im­pos­si­ble for nurs­es to clean up af­ter such pa­tients with­out wa­ter.

It has led to spec­u­la­tion that there is an is­sue with the wa­ter lines that bring their sup­ply from the WASA Well Sta­tion Num­ber 1 lo­cat­ed at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

The work­ers added that wards 12 and 13 are the most phys­i­cal­ly de­mand­ing and a wa­ter sup­ply is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion said yes­ter­day that St Ann’s has al­ways had a peren­ni­al wa­ter is­sue.

Pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said he’s all too fa­mil­iar with the nurs­es’ strug­gle.

“That par­tic­u­lar ward needs wa­ter even more be­cause of the unique cir­cum­stances where those pa­tients can’t do any­thing for them­selves. They ac­tu­al­ly are in cribs... They are prob­a­bly not aware of their sur­round­ings. And the nurs­es would have to take care of all their hy­giene needs. Do every sin­gle thing for them,” Stu­art ex­plained.

But re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, NWRHA Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny Blake said he im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed the mat­ter. He said an ini­tial dis­cus­sion with ad­min­is­tra­tors at the fa­cil­i­ty led to some say­ing they had no knowl­edge that pa­tients were not be­ing ti­died on the ward.

“I asked a Se­nior Nurs­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tor to go to the wards and speak with the staff. They told me that the plumbers would have got­ten a call this morn­ing about a burst line out­side Ward 12. They were able to buy the parts and ef­fect the re­pairs be­fore lunchtime to­day. They al­so called WASA and WASA in­di­cat­ed that they would be on the com­pound to as­sist with re­pairs to­mor­row (to­day),” Blake ex­plained.

“My in­struc­tion to them is when WASA comes to­mor­row, give them the sup­port to fix the bro­ken line. But it’s said to be a small leak so it’s not like they are not get­ting wa­ter. What you will have is re­duced wa­ter pres­sure. But the wa­ter pres­sure is high now and they are able to tidy the pa­tients,” he added.

Blake said he had no is­sue with staff mem­bers tak­ing com­plaints to the me­dia but he ques­tioned why the mat­ter was not el­e­vat­ed in­ter­nal­ly.

“There’s a mech­a­nism to el­e­vate a com­plaint. So for in­stance we have stand­by plumbers on staff so if you have a plumb­ing is­sue you are sup­posed to el­e­vate it to them,” he ex­plained.