Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ce­dros res­i­dents faced bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment dur­ing a meet­ing with Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan yes­ter­day when he re­fused to give in to their de­mand for a 24-hour, sev­en-days-a-week health cen­tre in the south­west­ern penin­su­la. Khan trav­elled to Ce­dros on a Coast Guard ves­sel to meet with res­i­dents, weeks af­ter they protest­ed for bet­ter health­care.

Fish­er­man Ben­ji Mo­hammed said the Ce­dros Health Cen­tre op­er­at­ed on an eight-to-four ba­sis and of­ten when peo­ple fell sick, they died be­fore they could reach the near­est hos­pi­tal, in Point Fortin. "Some­times fish­er­men get in­jured at sea and when they come to Ce­dros, the health cen­tre is closed. My neigh­bour, Mills Jho­lai, died af­ter get­ting a heart at­tack at sea be­cause there was no­body in the health cen­tre to help him," Mo­hammed said.

Pres­i­dent of the Granville Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil Shankar Teeluchs­ingh said a res­i­dent doc­tor was need­ed for com­mu­ni­ties like Ica­cos, Fullar­ton, Bonasse, Granville, Chatham and Coro­man­del. Teeluchs­ingh al­so called for an ef­fi­cient am­bu­lance ser­vice, say­ing too of­ten the am­bu­lance was parked in the health cen­tre with no para­medics or dri­ver.

He al­so com­plained that the Point Fortin hos­pi­tal did not have lab­o­ra­to­ry, X-ray and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices af­ter 4 pm. Khan met with chair­man of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), Lack­ram Bo­doe, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the SWRHA Anil Go­sine and oth­er stake­hold­ers be­fore speak­ing with the res­i­dents.

How­ev­er, he said it was not cost-ef­fec­tive to have the Ce­dros fa­cil­i­ty op­er­ate on a 24/7 ba­sis. The min­is­ter promised, how­ev­er, to pro­vide X-ray, lab­o­ra­to­ry fa­cil­i­ties and phar­ma­cy ser­vices 24/7 at the Point Fortin hos­pi­tal. Khan al­so said that an am­bu­lance with trained emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians would be placed round-the-clock at Ce­dros.

He said the Min­istry of Health would hire a pri­vate med­ical prac­ti­tion­er to pro­vide free ser­vice to Ce­dros res­i­dents for mi­nor in­juries on week­ends when the Ce­dros Cen­tre is closed. Khan said the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal was on­ly half an hour away from Ce­dros and it made no sense to have a doc­tor on call 24/7 for a few peo­ple.