It's dif­fi­cult to write any­thing about a bud­get that dis­pos­es of health in three short para­graphs or about two min­utes in a three-hour show.

It's dif­fi­cult to write any­thing about a bud­get that dis­pos­es of health in three short para­graphs or about two min­utes in a three-hour show.Still, that's bet­ter than the amount giv­en to art and, as Willi Chen said in his let­ter in Sat­ur­day's Guardian, "in the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in which $54 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to var­i­ous min­istries, was there any men­tion of a mu­se­um or a sim­ple un­adorned build­ing to show our in­dige­nous works of art?" Well no.These are the same ex­perts who are go­ing to con­vert Na­pari­ma Bowl in­to a train­ing area for nurs­es. Pre­sum­ably, the un­cov­ered am­phithe­atre will be used for dis­as­ter train­ing in case the roof of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal falls down as the Grena­di­an tsuna­mi by­pass­es the ever build­ing and end­less­ly cap­ti­vat­ing Tarou­ba sta­di­um, it­self sur­passed in glam­our on­ly by the end­less­ly build­ing and com­pro­mised To­ba­go hos­pi­tal.Hos­pi­tals were big in the bud-get. As­tound­ing­ly, six, count them, six new pub­lic hos­pi­tals are to be built in Trinidad. That is sim­ply amaz­ing.

For­get that we can­not get the sev­en ones we have to func­tion.For­get that we do not have the doc­tors, nurs­es, tech­ni­cians, porters, lab­o­ra­to­ries, X-rays, kitchens etc to ser­vice the ones we al­ready have.For­get that pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure and that the phi­los­o­phy in the Min­istry of Health is to place em­pha­sis on health cen­tres, im­mu­ni­sa­tion poli­cies, nu­tri­tion pro­grammes and ex­er­cise in mod­er­a­tion, in an at­tempt to pre­vent chron­ic, non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases which are dev­as­tat­ing our pop­u­la­tion.For­get the fact that all over the world hos­pi­tals are clos­ing or at least re­or­gan­is­ing so that more em­pha­sis is be­ing put on spe­cialised ser­vices like burn units, trau­ma units, emer­gency de­part­ments, car­dio­vas­cu­lar units, trans­plan­ta­tion ser­vices, fer­til­i­ty clin­ics and so on, so that the most ef­fi­cient care can be giv­en to the ma­jor prob­lems that a coun­try has.For­get about the mod­ern trend to­wards greater use of day care pro­ce­dures and en­hanced com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vices and sup­port.

No, no. We are go­ing to build more and more hos­pi­tals than we do not need, can­not ser­vice and can­not af­ford. The coun­try will soon be filled with huge emp­ty con­crete shells-sports sta­di­ums, of­fices build­ings and hos­pi­tals. Per­haps we can fill them with those equal­ly use­less com­mis­sions of en­quiry.The worst part of this hos­pi­tal build­ing fren­zy is the chil­dren's hos­pi­tal to be built in cen­tral. There is no need for this hos­pi­tal. The chil­dren's hos­pi­tal at the EWM­SC runs at about 75 per cent bed ca­pac­i­ty. That's well be­low any­where near full ca­pac­i­ty. One of its wards is be­ing used for hos­pi­tal­is­ing adults.It con­tin­ues to have sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems with staffing. Some one dozen spe­cial­ist pae­di­a­tri­cians have left it in dis­may with its ad­min­is­tra­tion over the last ten years. All of the be­fore men­tioned caveats re mod­ern hos­pi­tals ap­ply.We do not need two chil­dren's hos­pi­tals in T&T. We need to im­prove the fa­cil­i­ties at EWM­SC and on the chil­dren's wards at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The de­ci­sion to build an­oth­er chil­dren's hos­pi­tal can on­ly be ex­plained as a cam­paign po­lit­i­cal one. If so, then it would be a mea-sure of true lead­er­ship to qui­et­ly let that de­ci­sion die.

So what is use­ful in the bud­get as re­gards health? De­spite the amount of mon­ey be­ing thrown in­to it ($4.7 bil­lion), there is re­al­ly very lit­tle pos­i­tive, un­less you con­sid­er the ini­tia­tives for dis­abled peo­ple: Grants for poor, sin­gle moth­ers with a spe­cial child; food sup­port un­der the food card pro­gramme; free trans­porta­tion on the pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem; spe­cial­ly de­signed bus­es; schol­ar­ship of $5,000 to fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion or en­ter the labour mar­ket.That is the very first time any one in pow­er has ad­dressed such a crit­i­cal area as the dis­abled. It's a start. Noth­ing more.The new Min­is­ter of Health has shown an en­cour­ag­ing com­mit­ment to­wards in­tro­duc­ing breast­feed­ing pro­grammes. Breast­feed­ing not on­ly pro­duces health­i­er chil­dren and adults and so re­duces the eco­nom­ic costs of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion for both in­fec­tious and chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases but al­so de­creas­es your food im­port bill, re­sult­ing in vi­tal sav­ings of for­eign ex­change.

The idea to "un­veil an al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion sys­tem and ...es­tab­lish a mod­ern sys­tem of ur­ban trans­porta­tion" should re­sult in de­creased stress and con­se­quent­ly stress-re­lat­ed ill­ness. It might al­so help chil­dren to eat bet­ter by giv­ing their par­ents a chance to de­crease their de­pen­den­cy on fast food.Of course, any at­tempt to "strength­en the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice to en­sure that it meets in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and can pro­vide al­most re­al-time sta­tis­tics" will be in­valu­able for us to un­der­stand what our prob­lems in health re­al­ly are.And any­thing that im­proves the de­press­ing work­ing en­vi­ron­ment of the peo­ple in the civ­il ser­vice, in­clud­ing strength­en­ing "gov­er­nance and hu­man re­source man­age­ment and de­vel­op­ing a cul­ture of ef­fi­cien­cy in cus­tomer ser­vice in all min­istries, de­part­ments and agen­cies," is to be ap­plaud­ed. It can on­ly re­sult in hap­pi­er, health­i­er work­ers and that re­bounds to the ben­e­fit of all.The prob­lem, as oth­ers bet­ter versed than me in eco­nom­ics have stressed, is that words are cheap and where the mon­ey com­ing from? Well, to be­gin with, for­get build­ing hos­pi­tals?