Gail Alexan­der

The new Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal will be opened in phas­es, with out­pa­tient and di­ag­nos­tic ser­vices to be launched next Wednes­day, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's (THA) Health Di­vi­sion has stat­ed. THA health of­fi­cials-head­ed by Sec­re­tary for Health Clau­dia Groome-Duke-fi­nalised de­tails for the com­mis­sion­ing at a meet­ing last Mon­day.

Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan said last Thurs­day that he and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny. The Gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed the hos­pi­tal would be de­liv­ered by year's end. THA's Groome-Duke said: "If we had to wait for the whole hos­pi­tal to be com­plete, it would not be de­liv­ered be­fore the end of the year."

There­fore, the THA, the Min­istry and the Di­vi­sion came to an agree­ment to de­liv­er the hos­pi­tal in parts so that the Di­vi­sion can be­gin ser­vices where safe­ty in pro­vid­ing the ser­vice can be as­sured. The THA's Health Di­vi­sion was ini­tial­ly in­formed that the Gov­ern­ment might open the hos­pi­tal next Thurs­day dur­ing a pro­ject­ed Cab­i­net vis­it to To­ba­go. But the THA was told last week that it was no longer pos­si­ble and the open­ing date should be brought for­ward.

A part of the hos­pi­tal will be hand­ed from the con­trac­tor to Nipdec, then to the Min­istry of Health in a cer­e­mo­ny. The THA will then be al­lowed to use the build­ing to start some ser­vices, but the build­ing will con­tin­ue to be­long to the Min­istry of Health and Nipdec un­til it is com­plet­ed. So the ide­al se­quence has been ad­just­ed to op­er­ate di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment (for CT scans and mam­mog­ra­phy) not read­i­ly avail­able for pa­tients in To­ba­go.

This will be made avail­able to them in the first phase while To­bag­o­ni­ans await com­ple­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty. Al­so ex­pect­ed to come on-stream in the first phase are out­pa­tient clin­ics and ac­ci­dent and emer­gency ser­vices. The 100-bed, state-of-the-art hos­pi­tal is es­ti­mat­ed to cost a to­tal of $725 mil­lion span­ning two ad­min­is­tra­tions-the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment from 2000 to 2010 (in­clud­ing a two-year pe­ri­od in­volv­ing court pro­ceed­ings) and the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2010 to date.

Sod-turn­ing in 2000 was fol­lowed by the start of con­struc­tion in 2003. The ini­tial con­trac­tor, NH In­ter­na­tion­al, how­ev­er, fell in­to le­gal pro­ceed­ings with Nipdec, the su­per­vis­ing Gov­ern­ment agency. Chi­na Rail­way re­placed NH. When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the site last week, Chi­na Rail­way em­ploy­ees were on the scene and the spank­ing new fa­cil­i­ty was be­ing read­ied for un­veil­ing in a few weeks.

The THA said mov­ing in­to the new hos­pi­tal from the cur­rent site is sim­i­lar to mov­ing house, "but 1,000 times more com­plex since very sick pa­tients are in­volved in the move and the fa­cil­i­ty is much larg­er." The hos­pi­tal al­so in­cludes psy­chi­a­try treat­ment sec­tions, four state-of-the-art op­er­at­ing the­atres, a large In­ten­sive Care Unit and a chapel fac­ing sea­ward at one end.

The mor­tu­ary ac­com­mo­dates three times more bod­ies than the old hos­pi­tal and in­cludes ex­tra large com­part­ments. Re­me­di­al work was be­ing done to some ar­eas to as­sure they were ready for oc­cu­pan­cy, the THA con­firmed. Full oc­cu­pa­tion will not be pos­si­ble un­til af­ter the phased move of all the ser­vices from the present hos­pi­tal to the new one.

The THA es­ti­mat­ed that the move would take ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months but the time­line may be ad­just­ed now that the THA has a start-up of op­er­a­tions. The hos­pi­tal was a talk­ing point for the PP coali­tion dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, ow­ing to the cost over­runs-but it is the crown jew­el in the PNM-con­trolled THA, even though the PP Gov­ern­ment will be pre­sid­ing over its open­ing.

The hos­pi­tal will there­fore be a sub­ject for both po­lit­i­cal sides dur­ing the THA elec­tions due next year. To­ba­go's PNM has been mon­i­tor­ing the project close­ly and has re­leased sev­er­al state­ments re­mind­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans of the hos­pi­tal's "PNM roots." The PNM not­ed that in May 2010, the fa­cil­i­ty was 86 per cent com­plet­ed ac­cord­ing to a PP Gov­ern­ment as­sess­ment.

So PNM's To­ba­go Coun­cil stat­ed: "It can on­ly be as­sumed that, giv­en the hos­pi­tal is be­ing de­liv­ered in phas­es, that it is not 100 per cent com­plete. "The PNM took sev­en years (with a two-year hold in court) to com­plete 86 per cent amount­ing to an an­nu­al build­ing rate of 12.3 per cent or a 17 per cent rate of ac­tive build­ing time; as com­pared to the present UNC-led Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment which has tak­en two years to com­plete 12 per cent of the work and the build­ing is not yet com­plet­ed."