Sascha Wil­son

Lo­cat­ing beds for pa­tients with dengue-like symp­toms con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, ac­cord­ing to head of Urol­o­gy, Dr Lester Goetz. He said so on Tues­day, dur­ing a vis­it to the hos­pi­tal by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, not­ing that there had been a steady flow of peo­ple go­ing to the hos­pi­tal to be test­ed for dengue. Ge­otz, who ap­pealed to res­i­dents to en­sure that their com­mu­ni­ties were clean, said: "We are hop­ing that com­mu­ni­ties are aware of this and take care of their neigh­bours' emp­ty lands and of their lands and make sure that they don't have stag­nant wa­ter hang­ing around for the mos­qui­toes to breed. "About 25 peo­ple are screened, usu­al­ly we pick up two or three who are re­al­ly pos­i­tive, but a lot of peo­ple com­ing for­ward come with sim­ple vi­ral dis­eases, but we have to rule out dengue be­cause of the se­ri­ous­ness (of dengue)."

Goetz said there had been a "fair" amount of pae­di­atric cas­es, as well as peo­ple be­ing ad­mit­ted to in­ter­nal med­ical wards. "There is a chal­lenge in terms of bed space be­cause of the large num­bers and we don't know who is neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive un­til the re­sults come back." He said some pae­di­atric cas­es had to be sent to the pae­di­atric sur­gi­cal ward be­cause there was no room in the pae­di­atric ward. He said that was why the pro­vi­sion of an ad­di­tion­al 234 beds by Chancery Lane Hos­pi­tal Com­plex was im­por­tant. The new hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber.