AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt 

As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar push­es ahead with her promise to re­vive the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, the T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) says there is no need for it and there are not even enough pae­di­atric nurs­es to staff the fa­cil­i­ty.

TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art yes­ter­day said a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal is un­war­rant­ed. 

“We re­al­ly hope they don’t go through with that. Cur­rent­ly, there are two chil­dren’s units in T&T. There’s the Wendy Fitzwilliam Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal at Er­ic Williams and there’s San Fer­nan­do,” Stu­art said dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme.

He said those two units are not prop­er­ly staffed and are not yet “fill­ing over with chil­dren.”

“In fact, they are op­er­at­ing at less than 50 per cent. So, there’s no need for a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal. There’s no doc­u­ment that the UNC can pull to in­di­cate that we need a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal in Trinidad. There’s none,” Stu­art said.

The hos­pi­tal, opened in 2015 by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment as a ded­i­cat­ed chil­dren’s med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, was re­pur­posed dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and now func­tions as a mul­ti-pur­pose fa­cil­i­ty.

“And on top of that, we don’t have the staff to op­er­ate a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal. We don’t have the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise to op­er­ate a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal. There’s one neona­tol­o­gist in Trinidad. One. There’s no nurs­ing school cur­rent­ly train­ing per­sons in pe­di­atric or neona­tal nurs­ing.” 

Be­yond the on­go­ing na­tion­al nurs­ing short­age, Stu­art urged the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on ful­fill­ing key promis­es—set­tling salary ne­go­ti­a­tions for med­ical staff and hir­ing more nurs­es.

“Just pri­or to the elec­tion, the pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter would have an­nounced that nurs­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions ought to be­gin with the Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tions…so we hope that promise is kept be­fore you im­ple­ment any oth­er promise that is not im­por­tant at this time.” 

Though con­fi­dent in new­ly ap­point­ed Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Stu­art re­mind­ed him to fo­cus on over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty in his new role.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe said the Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the op­er­a­tions of all health fa­cil­i­ties.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, the new Health Min­is­ter said, “At this junc­ture, a thor­ough needs as­sess­ment and util­i­sa­tion re­view of sev­er­al health­care fa­cil­i­ties is be­ing con­duct­ed, in­clud­ing the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.” 

Re­gard­ing staffing is­sues, Bo­doe said the min­istry re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing all avail­able ca­pac­i­ty in the health sec­tor is utilised to bring re­lief to cit­i­zens. 

“I ac­knowl­edge and re­spect Mr Stu­art’s on­go­ing ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of the nurs­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. Nurs­es play a piv­otal role in the de­liv­ery of health­care at our na­tion’s in­sti­tu­tions. Deal­ing with the short­age of nurs­es and train­ing of spe­cial­ist nurs­es is high on this Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da,” he added.