Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al is ex­press­ing her dis­ap­point­ment with the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), over its de­ci­sion to can­cel a vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve she was or­gan­is­ing in the Gulf View, San Fer­nan­do area.

Lutch­me­di­al says she was or­gan­is­ing it as part of her goal to sup­port a re­quest by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to get peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties to vac­ci­nate to fa­cil­i­tate the cur­rent na­tion­al mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

“We had a vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve planned for Fri­day. This dri­ve would have come about as a re­quest—both a pub­lic and pri­vate re­quest that came to me—to sup­port the na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion ef­fort,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

She said they were able to ral­ly up some 130 peo­ple, in­clud­ing chil­dren, will­ing to get the vac­cine. She said they al­so had a phe­nom­e­nal re­sponse from cor­po­rate T&T and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

“We had 10 vol­un­teer doc­tors and nurs­es who can­celled ap­point­ments in their pri­vate prac­tice, shift­ed their work sched­ules and so on to be able to staff this vac­ci­na­tion site on Fri­day,” she said.

How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al said the SWRHA con­tact­ed her on Tues­day, in­form­ing her it was can­celled be­cause they had a new vac­ci­na­tion strat­e­gy. Now, she said, she does not be­lieve she and her team will be able to do an­oth­er dri­ve.

“If they want an­oth­er site and an­oth­er date, I dun­no. I would not re­sist as­sist­ing in any way but I don’t see my­self or­gan­is­ing an­oth­er day like this just to get can­celled abrupt­ly on me again,” she lament­ed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for a com­ment on the is­sue, the SWRHA sent a state­ment that did not re­fer to the can­cel­la­tion.

The state­ment said, “The SWRHA con­firms that our COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme con­tin­ues un­in­ter­rupt­ed at all our health fa­cil­i­ties and mass vac­ci­na­tion sites to­geth­er with com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes both fixed and mo­bile ser­vices based on ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of re­sources. No ap­point­ments need­ed. Mem­bers of the pub­lic are ad­vised to be en­gaged with SWRHA’s dig­i­tal me­dia plat­forms for COVID-19 up­dates, in­clud­ing SWRHA’s con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al roll­out of John­son and John­son vac­cines at all health cen­tres from to­day, Sep­tem­ber 1.”