The over­ex­po­sure of can­cer pa­tients to ra­di­a­tion is a tragedy that in ret­ro­spect could have been avoid­ed. At least we found out about this in­sti­tu­tion-what about the oth­ers? I think al­though we live in a re­ac­tive so­ci­ety and spend a lot of time dis­cussing the lat­est er­rors and calami­ties, we need to re­al­ly sit down and deal with this is­sue of ra­di­a­tion use in T&T. A few years ago, the Ra­di­a­tion Pro­tec­tion Work­ing Group (2006) was es­tab­lished to deal with the is­sue of ra­di­a­tion use in the coun­try. Draft­ing reg­u­la­tions for both in­dus­tri­al as well as med­ical ra­di­a­tion use was its pri­or­i­ty. Since that time a draft was made but noth­ing came out of it. I am hap­py the min­is­ter is in­tent on new leg­is­la­tion, but we need to con­sid­er what was done be­fore and con­sult with those peo­ple who were in­volved. It makes no sense to rein­vent the wheel when most of the work may have al­ready been done.

We may al­so need to look at all lev­els where ra­di­a­tion is used in the med­ical and in­dus­tri­al fields and not just at ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py. There are many pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions that use X-rays (ra­di­a­tion) but can the Min­istry of Health re­al­ly say how safe the X-ray equip­ment is and if the peo­ple do­ing X-rays, ra­di­a­tion treat­ment or even ul­tra­sound, CT or CAT scan, MRI scan, mam­mo­gram, echocar­dio­g­ra­phy, nu­clear med­i­cine scan or even Bone scan, are re­al­ly qual­i­fied or trained to do them? Who knows if the un­scrupu­lous use of X-rays is lead­ing to in­creas­es in peo­ple suf­fer­ing with can­cer? Maybe the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er ac­cred­i­ta­tion of equip­ment, de­part­ments and even hos­pi­tals to help solve some of these prob­lems. How else are we to know which in­sti­tu­tion (es­pe­cial­ly if we choose a pri­vate one) to go to? Maybe there should be cer­tifi­cates of X-ray work­ers (with pho­to IDs) and of equip­ment post­ed at all pub­lic or pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions so pa­tients can make in­formed de­ci­sions about where to choose.

Ra­di­a­tion in­spec­tors might be a good idea to help us as well. They can do planned and un­planned site vis­its to make sure that in­sti­tu­tions are con­form­ing to the law. At the end of the day we need the Gov­ern­ment to safe­guard the pub­lic and users of all high-tech equip­ment. Most peo­ple in the pub­lic do not even un­der­stand what the equip­ment does and how it works, so we need knowl­edge­able peo­ple to help pro­tect us and our chil­dren. Un­til leg­is­la­tion ma­te­ri­alis­es, take your health in­to your own hands and pro­tect your­self. Ask ques­tions and get the ap­pro­pri­ate an­swers be­fore you de­cide which in­sti­tu­tion to go to. If you are un­cer­tain about the per­son do­ing your ra­di­a­tion ex­am­i­na­tion, ask for their cre­den­tials or check with the Coun­cil for Pro­fes­sions Re­lat­ed to Med­i­cine. Fi­nal­ly, may God help those who were un­for­tu­nate­ly over­ex­posed to ra­di­a­tion and help the im­pli­cat­ed au­thor­i­ties to cor­rect their faults.

T Dean

So­ci­ety of Ra­di­og­ra­phers