Yvonne Webb

The sit­u­a­tion at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is wors­en­ing, ac­cord­ing to act­ing Med­ical Di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon.He said staff con­tin­ued to be de­mor­alised by the sus­pen­sion of doc­tors and nurs­es and the sack­ing of the for­mer CEO of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch.These ac­tions came af­ter the death of a young moth­er at the in­sti­tu­tion, hours af­ter she un­der­went a Cae­sare­an sec­tion."Things are not good...There are plen­ty, plen­ty prob­lems," Cha­toor­goon said, adding that he placed blame square­ly on the shoul­ders of Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis.

He called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­move Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis from the Health Min­istry.De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, Cha­toor­goon said: "Many nurs­es stayed away."Many of the wards were short-staffed...The over­crowd­ing is worse than ever."Doc­tors are very cau­tious and hes­i­tant to dis­charge pa­tients for fear of reper­cus­sions."There are over 30 pa­tients right now await­ing beds...All gy­nae­co­log­i­cal clin­ics have been sus­pend­ed, elec­tive gy­nae­col­o­gy surg­eries are on hold, the op­er­at­ing the­atres are on­ly in emer­gency mode right now.

"There are plen­ty prob­lems, and the Prime Min­is­ter, in ad­di­tion to es­tab­lish­ing an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­missal of SWRHA CEO Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch, should al­so move quick­ly to re­solve this cri­sis."Cha­toor­goon ex­plained that all elec­tive surg­eries had been can­celled be­cause anaes­thetists were con­cerned about a di­rec­tive by Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr An­ton Cum­ber­batch that doc­tors who did not have post-grad­u­ate de­grees should not func­tion as reg­is­trars."That is a very se­ri­ous blow to us, since many of our doc­tors who func­tion and act as reg­is­trars do not hold post- grad­u­ate de­grees," Cha­toor­goon said­He said that in the De­part­ment of Anaes­thet­ics and the In­ten­sive Care Unit, where they dealt with crit­i­cal and high-risk cas­es, none of the doc­tors who act­ed as reg­is­trars had post-grad­u­ate de­grees.