Pres­i­dent of the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MPATT) Dr She­henaz Mo­hammed has called on Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan to do a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion with­in the med­ical field. She made the com­ment in re­sponse to last Sun­day Guardian's re­port which said a $1.6 mil­lion bill was sub­mit­ted to the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty on be­half of a pen­sion­er who sub­se­quent­ly died af­ter un­der­go­ing a $4,500 tra­cheoto­my.

In a state­ment, Mo­hammed said the health­care sys­tem had been suf­fer­ing be­cause of poor ad­min­is­tra­tion. "MPATT is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Health and the Cab­i­net to em­pha­sise and pri­ori­tise the health ser­vice and as such we are call­ing for a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the spend­ing of the Gov­ern­ment funds to those few doc­tors in the pri­vate sec­tor."

She al­so called for in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the pay­ment of re­mu­ner­a­tion to peo­ple em­ployed in the pub­lic sec­tor while work­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the pri­vate sec­tor. She lament­ed the loss of con­fi­dence in the health sec­tor by the pub­lic. "When the for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and now the act­ing Chief Jus­tice (Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo) go abroad for health­care and when the av­er­age mem­ber of the pub­lic has to be re­ferred to a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion, it is then that the fail­ings of the health­care sys­tem are sys­tem­at­ic and wide­spread," Mo­hammed said.

She added that the "woe­ful ne­glect of the health sys­tem over the decades is the rea­son why ex­or­bi­tant and un­ac­cept­able prices are be­ing paid to a few in the pri­vate sec­tor." "These few peo­ple seem to be goug­ing out pub­lic funds and the Sun­day Guardian high­lights pre­cise­ly this," Mo­hammed said. She not­ed that the Gafoor Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in 2006 points to the many prob­lems in the health sec­tor.

"Many of these prob­lems were ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied since the Julien Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in 1957. "It is ab­solute­ly un­be­liev­able that there has nev­er been a po­lit­i­cal will to fix these prob­lems," Mo­hammed said. She called on the Health Min­istry to in­ves­ti­gate thor­ough­ly and en­sure that prop­er health ser­vices were pro­vid­ed to the cit­i­zens as part of "pub­lic goods."

Last Sun­day, Khan ex­pressed dis­plea­sure with the ex­or­bi­tant bills for­ward­ed to the NWRHA by the pri­vate hos­pi­tal.He not­ed that sev­er­al "huge claims" are be­ing made to the NWRHA adding that prop­er checks and bal­ances will be put in place.