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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Chamber president: Use PPP model for Couva hospital

by

20160301

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Richie Sookhai has rec­om­mend­ed that the pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) busi­ness de­vel­op­ment mod­el be used to ful­ly ac­ti­vate the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal. Sookhai said de­lays in bring­ing the fa­cil­i­ty in­to full op­er­a­tions could end up cost­ing the na­tion dear­ly.

He said while the cost of a ful­ly op­er­a­tional hos­pi­tal could add to al­ready high de­mands on Gov­ern­ment's cash re­sources, the PPP mod­el could ease that bur­den and should be adopt­ed to en­sure there are no fur­ther de­lays.

Sookhai not­ed that there are "a num­ber of well-re­spect­ed chil­dren's fa­cil­i­ties in oth­er coun­tries that have an in­ter­est in ex­pand­ing ser­vices in­to the Caribbean re­gion."

He said: "Ex­plor­ing part­ner­ships with for­eign spe­cial­ist fa­cil­i­ties could mean that some of the bed ca­pac­i­ty of the hos­pi­tal is as­signed to pri­vate sec­tor health­care, and the rest of the bed ca­pac­i­ty is hos­pi­tal to full op­er­a­tion and serv­ing the health­care needs of chil­dren, the PPP ap­proach could mean that our lo­cal health­care prac­ti­tion­ers can be ex­posed to new and emerg­ing health­care meth­ods and ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit the lo­cal health sys­tem."

"The ven­ture can help with di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in oth­er sec­tors, for ex­am­ple, med­ical tourism and sport tourism. So many sport­ing events take place in the Caribbean and this hos­pi­tal can stand as a bea­con in this re­gion to cater for the ath­let­ics, while pro­vid­ing world class ser­vice."

Sookhai added: "We have a fa­cil­i­ty that is com­plet­ed and ready for op­er­a­tions, and we have a pub­lic that is in­creas­ing­ly in need of spe­cial­ist care for chil­dren. Fur­ther de­lays will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on us in hav­ing to main­tain a non-func­tion­ing fa­cil­i­ty, and more than that, not be­ing able to pro­vide ap­pro­pri­ate care for sick chil­dren."


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