JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

THA launches parallel health system to fight Omicron

by

Akash Samaroo
1150 days ago
20220119
Roxborough Hospital Medical Chief of Staff Dr Nathaniel Duke.

Roxborough Hospital Medical Chief of Staff Dr Nathaniel Duke.

THA INFO DEPT

In prepa­ra­tion for what the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is call­ing a “surge in Omi­cron cas­es,” To­ba­go, for the first time, will soon have a par­al­lel health care sys­tem.

Speak­ing at the THA’s post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said he is hop­ing to have the sys­tem up and run­ning by Feb­ru­ary 2.

He said the old Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal will be con­vert­ed in­to an in­fec­tious dis­ease con­trol cen­tre. Cur­rent­ly, COVID-19 pa­tients are be­ing kept there but any­one need­ing In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) treat­ment is trans­ferred to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“We can get Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal back to reg­u­lar care be­cause there are oth­er ail­ments on the is­land be­sides COVID-19 and peo­ple with oth­er dis­eases have been suf­fer­ing be­cause the fo­cus is on COVID-19,” Au­gus­tine said.

The THA has giv­en in­fec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist Dr Nathaniel Duke the man­date to over­see the set­ting up of the par­al­lel sys­tem. Dr Duke said lo­gis­ti­cal­ly, it will not be an easy task but some­thing needs to be done be­cause while there are now three con­firmed cas­es of Omi­cron on the is­land, re­al­is­ti­cal­ly there are much more.

“So this vari­ant which is now cir­cu­lat­ing in the To­ba­go space, as of to­day they have record­ed three, so epi­demi­o­log­i­cal­ly, we can mul­ti­ply that by 100 and that will prob­a­bly be the amount of Omi­cron-pos­i­tive pa­tients cir­cu­lat­ing in our so­ci­ety. So, there­fore, a surge is about to come, so we have to be pre­pared for that surge that is on our doorstep.”

Mean­while, Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B Yis­rael said of the three con­firmed cas­es, on­ly one or two had a trav­el his­to­ry.

She said the par­al­lel sys­tem will al­low her di­vi­sion to cen­tralise COVID-19 care.

“It will en­sure we con­cen­trate our re­sources, so we are not try­ing to find a doc­tor to go here there and every­where or nurs­es, we know that we have them in a sin­gle space so we can man­age them bet­ter.”

Dr Duke said the fa­cil­i­ty will need a cadre of staff who are trained in crit­i­cal and pul­monary care.

“So in­ten­sivists with crit­i­cal care and pul­monary post-grad­u­ate train­ing is one of the cat­e­gories of staff that will be sought, we have res­pi­ra­to­ry ther­a­pist, that is a cat­e­go­ry not used in the pub­lic sys­tem but in the pri­vate sec­tor.”

He said there will al­so be the need for retro­fitting at the des­ig­nat­ed fa­cil­i­ty.

“We are look­ing at our oxy­gen sup­ply and it is my un­der­stand­ing that help is on the way, the oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tors will be in­stalled soon and that would boost our de­pen­dence from send­ing bot­tles to and from Trinidad.”

In terms of the med­ica­tion stock for the fa­cil­i­ty, Duke said it will be re­viewed as there is a short­age of some drugs. He said that may in­volve pur­chas­ing stock out­side the reg­u­lar Gov­ern­ment chan­nels and go­ing di­rect­ly to the dis­trib­u­tors.

Duke said this will al­so stop the comin­gling of health work­ers, as there is cur­rent­ly a high rate of un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees in both the Di­vi­sion of Health and To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA). At the TRHA, on­ly 35 per cent of work­ers are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, some­thing the Chief Sec­re­tary finds very trou­bling. How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go at this time can­not adopt the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach of send­ing home un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff.

“Can you imag­ine go­ing to the hos­pi­tal and more than 65 per cent of the staff not present be­cause they are un­vac­ci­nat­ed?”Au­gus­tine said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored