Kali­fa Clyne

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Amery Browne has con­demned Gov­ern­ment's clo­sure and lack of con­sul­ta­tion in the clo­sure of the St James Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency (A&E) Unit. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Browne said cit­i­zens were trau­ma­tised and out­raged at the clo­sure of the free fa­cil­i­ty. "The res­i­dents are ques­tion­ing in par­tic­u­lar the man­ner in which the ser­vice was sud­den­ly dis­man­tled, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the SoE con­di­tions in which cit­i­zen protest can­not oc­cur," said Browne. Browne said no stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion had tak­en place and said the min­i­mum re­quired was a full stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion out­lin­ing any pro­posed re-de­ploy­ment of re­sources pri­or to a de­ci­sion be­ing tak­en. Browne said Gov­ern­ment should apol­o­gise and take im­me­di­ate steps to re­store the free 24-hour emer­gency ser­vice.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan said the fa­cil­i­ty was be­ing used for same day surg­eries which was an area se­vere­ly lack­ing at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Khan said the fa­cil­i­ty could be used for emer­gen­cies and would in fact have a doc­tor avail­able 24 hours. "Peo­ple re­al­ly used St James as a back­door ap­proach to get to the Port-of-Spain A&E. They can still be seen in St James as it will have an op­er­at­ing the­atre," said Khan. Khan felt there were no ma­jor changes that had tak­en place and said the on­ly re­al change was the name of the fa­cil­i­ty. "As an A&E unit the fa­cil­i­ty was un­der-utilised. This fa­cil­i­ty will do about 1,500 same day surg­eries per month," said Khan. Khan said his min­istry was still look­ing at the lo­gis­tics and con­tem­plat­ing in­stalling a full A&E unit at the site.