Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Cab­i­net has agreed to a pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship to de­sign, fi­nance, build and op­er­ate cen­tres of spe­cialised med­i­cine through­out the coun­try. Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan made the an­nounce­ment at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. He said the land would be pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. He said Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing to at­tract pri­vate in­vestors to in­vest in five-star med­ical cen­tres. He said the star rat­ing of the coun­try's hos­pi­tals were two or two and a half.

The cen­tres would in­clude car­dio­vas­cu­lar, neu­ro-sur­gi­cal, crit­i­cal care med­i­cine, in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gy, in­ter­ven­tion­al car­di­ol­o­gy, ra­dio­ther­a­py, haema­tol­ogy, blood trans­fu­sion, gas­troen­terol­o­gy, or­thopaedic and oth­er ar­eas. Khan could not state how many cen­tres would be built but that they will be fi­nanced by the pri­vate sec­tor. Gov­ern­ment will pay for ser­vices at an agreed rate based on the health bud­get. He said it was an in­no­v­a­tive idea which had al­ready re­ceived bless­ings from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an. Khan said: "The Min­istry of Health has been try­ing over the years to de­vel­op pro­ce­dures and prac­tices to bring about the change and the man­age­ment of these high-end spe­cial­i­ty ser­vices.

"These spe­cial­i­ty ser­vices year by year are be­com­ing more and more ex­pen­sive. "The in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in our coun­try that pro­vide these pri­vate med­ical in­sur­ance seem to be col­lect­ing pre­mi­ums and not pay­ing out as much as they should be­cause a lot of our pop­u­la­tion does not have the mon­ey to pay core pay­ments so they end up in the pub­lic health sec­tor." Khan said the part­ner­ship will au­gur well for med­ical tourism. He said sev­er­al ex­ter­nal med­ical cen­tres in the Unit­ed States will bid to build the cen­tres.

"You will find a move­ment will be com­ing from Amer­i­ca to Trinidad and To­ba­go and from South Amer­i­ca and the rest of the Caribbean. "This is will re­sult in a high lev­el of health­care for our Trinidad pop­u­la­tion and the re­gion," he said.

Khan said cur­rent­ly there were sev­er­al "mi­ni-hos­pi­tals" with some of them hav­ing sec­ondary care ser­vices and oth­ers hav­ing par­tial ter­tiary ser­vices. He said the spaces along­side the hos­pi­tals would be utilised for con­struc­tion of some cen­tres.