Geisha Kow­lessar

A cri­sis in the health sec­tor is wors­en­ing as doc­tors at Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, have thrown their full sup­port be­hind their south­ern col­leagues.At a meet­ing held on Tues­day by the Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MPATT) at Am­phithe­atre A of the hos­pi­tal, it was un­der­stood that Mt Hope doc­tors were al­so "fear­ful" that their rep­u­ta­tion would be at risk by per­form­ing surg­eries, es­pe­cial­ly high-risk op­er­a­tions like Cae­sare­an sec­tions.And for a third day yes­ter­day, surg­eries at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal were put on hold as doc­tors have re­mained adamant about with­hold­ing their ser­vices.

Hos­pi­tal sources said south­ern doc­tors main­tained that there would be an "in­def­i­nite hold" on surg­eries un­less Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis "clears up" whether poli­cies were breached in the death of 29-year-old Chrys­tal Boodoo-Ram­soomair.The moth­er of three died af­ter child­birth at the San Fer­nan­do hos­pi­tal on March 4.As con­fu­sion con­tin­ues over what has been termed as an "il­le­gal tri­bunal" set up by the Health Min­istry, it is un­der­stood that this ini­tia­tive has been quashed.Dr She­henaz Mo­hammed, MPATT's gen­er­al sec­re­tary, said a de­ci­sion had been tak­en that a tri­bunal would now be set up by the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (swRHA).

A date for the tri­bunal, how­ev­er, has not yet been de­cid­ed."The min­istry can­not hold an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause the tri­bunal was not prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed," Mo­hammed said."It has been un­der­stood that the min­istry has now backed down and the RHA would now hold the tri­bunal."Adding that doc­tors would be "will­ing" to ap­pear be­fore the SWRHA's tri­bunal, Mo­hammed said it would con­sist of three peo­ple, in­clud­ing doc­tors and lay peo­ple hold­ing "very se­nior" po­si­tions in the health sec­tor."Doc­tors will will­ing­ly ap­pear be­fore a tri­bunal once it is con­sti­tut­ed by the RHA and not the Health Min­istry," she said.

"The min­istry is to­tal­ly out of place to de­mand that doc­tors ap­pear be­fore a tri­bunal con­sti­tut­ed by the min­istry."Say­ing that doc­tors at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal were op­er­at­ing on "emer­gency mode," Mo­hammed said "giv­en the cir­cum­stances, doc­tors were not over­work­ing them­selves.""The San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is very short-staffed and doc­tors are op­er­at­ing in emer­gency mode and they are not go­ing to take the risk of over­work­ing them­selves at this point," she said."All of the de­part­ments, be­cause of this sit­u­a­tion, doc­tors are not will­ing to over­work them­selves and put them­selves at risk un­der these cir­cum­stances....Their hands are tied."She said doc­tors who had been act­ing in se­nior po­si­tions at the hos­pi­tal were now un­will­ing to do so."Ques­tions have al­so arisen re­gard­ing those act­ing po­si­tions which are spe­cial­ist po­si­tions," Mo­hammed said.

"These are doc­tors who have the ex­per­tise to fill these va­can­cies and they are now re­luc­tant to con­tin­ue to fill these ar­eas."She said every sys­tem had its flaws, but that was "still bet­ter that the chaos that was now cre­at­ed" at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.In re­gard to the au­top­sy per­formed by pathol­o­gist Dr Hu­bert Dais­ley on Boodoo-Ram­soomair, which re­vealed her ar­ter­ies were sev­ered, Mo­hammed said there was no cor­re­la­tion with notes from doc­tors who at­tend­ed to the moth­er of three."The clin­i­cal notes do not cor­re­late with her ar­ter­ies be­ing sev­ered," she said."There is def­i­nite­ly noth­ing in keep­ing with the au­top­sy re­sults."She added that clin­i­cal notes nor­mal­ly en­tailed a pa­tient's blood pres­sure, blood count among oth­er fac­tors.