The Min­istry of Health has im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mea­sures to bring med­ical re­lief and in­creased ac­cess to health ser­vices to res­i­dents of west Trinidad who were af­fect­ed by last Sat­ur­day's flood­ing. In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it was an ac­tive mem­ber of the emer­gency op­er­at­ing cen­tre that has been set up at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure the men­tal and phys­i­cal health needs of the com­mu­ni­ty were ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

It said the min­istry's pub­lic health in­spec­tors had been de­ployed to the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties since last Sat­ur­day, to pro­vide on­go­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal, food and wa­ter sur­veil­lance, and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide this sup­port to the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Any ar­eas re­quir­ing treat­ment have been re­ferred to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion for re­me­di­al ac­tion.

The state­ment said med­ical teams from the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) have been con­duct­ing med­ical as­sess­ments dai­ly for peo­ple at the shel­ters set up at the La Sei­va and Di­a­mond Vale Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tres, and pro­vid­ing med­ical as­sis­tance as re­quired, eg re­place­ment of lost med­ica­tion and re­lief for mi­nor ail­ments. Arrange­ments have been put in place for the dai­ly trans­port to near­by health fa­cil­i­ties of peo­ple at these shel­ters who re­quire fol­low-up treat­ment.

In ad­di­tion to the nor­mal open­ing hours at the St James Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty (24 hours), and 8 am to 4 pm at all health cen­tres in the North West re­gion, arrange­ments have been put in place to of­fer ex­tend­ed open­ing hours to res­i­dents of the Diego Mar­tin com­mu­ni­ty at two health fa­cil­i­ties. Pe­tit Val­ley Health Cen­tre now has open­ing hours of 8 am to 9 pm on Tues­days and Thurs­days and the Mar­aval Health Cen­tre will be open from 8 am to 9 pm on Wednes­days.

To en­sure med­ical care is ac­ces­si­ble to all, med­ical out­reach clin­ics are be­ing of­fered via a mo­bile clin­ic, which has been vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in Diego Mar­tin. This one-day clin­ic will be done by NWRHA in con­junc­tion with the Fo­rum of In­di­an Na­tion­als in T&T and the Red Cross So­ci­ety of T&T.

The min­istry said pub­lic health in­spec­tors have been de­ployed to the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties since last week Sat­ur­day to pro­vide on­go­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal, food and wa­ter sur­veil­lance, and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide this sup­port to the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Any ar­eas re­quir­ing treat­ment have been re­ferred to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion for re­me­di­al ac­tion.

Of­fi­cers of the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion have been do­ing bio­ci­dal spray­ing (dis­in­fec­tion) around the af­fect­ed ar­eas to dis­cour­age the out­break of dis­ease and ill­ness and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide this sup­port to the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as re­quired.