Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment should fa­cil­i­tate a meet­ing be­tween the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pa­tients who were over-ra­di­at­ed to dis­cuss the way for­ward, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Prof Harold Ramkissoon said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing in the Sen­ate, Ramkissoon al­so said there should be an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the over-ra­di­a­tion of pa­tients at the cen­tre. Ramkissoon was speak­ing on the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties Bill.

The sen­a­tor said he was ded­i­cat­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to vic­tims of the over-ra­di­a­tion and Prof Den­nis Pan­tin, who died last year. Ramkissoon said the over-ra­di­a­tion seemed to be a case of grave neg­li­gence, since an­nu­al checks were not made in 2009, and oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing the lack of physi­cists to cal­i­brate the ma­chines, had con­tributed to the prob­lems. He said the si­lence from the cen­tre was "deaf­en­ing, while the ev­i­dence is near-damn­ing."

Ques­tion­ing the role and fol­low-up of the State in all this, Ramkissoon said the au­thor­i­ties were not emerg­ing smelling of ros­es. In­stead of the State pick­ing up the tab for the sit­u­a­tion, Ramkissoon sug­gest­ed the Health Min­istry set up a meet­ing with the cen­tre and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the over-ra­di­at­ed group and dis­cuss the way for­ward.

"We need a full, open in­ves­ti­ga­tion of what tran­spired," Ramkissoon added. He not­ed a sim­i­lar over-ra­di­a­tion case in Pana­ma, which he said was han­dled more sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly and prompt­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of an ac­cred­i­ta­tion body for can­cer cen­tres. Two peo­ple found cul­pa­ble in the Pana­ma case were al­so jailed for four years and barred from prac­tis­ing for sev­en more.

Ramkissoon said if Pana­man­ian ac­cred­i­ta­tion was avail­able to T&T, all ra­di­a­tion-ther­a­py cen­tres should seek ap­proval from this re­gion­al body. He sug­gest­ed T&T al­so seek mem­ber­ship in the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency (IAEA), which would give the coun­try a voice on ra­di­a­tion is­sues.

He al­so said a leg­isla­tive frame­work for such sit­u­a­tions should be adopt­ed and called for harsh pe­nal­i­ties when cas­es of over-ra­di­a­tion are proven. Ramkissoon al­so said the fact that T&T does not yet have an on­col­o­gy cen­tre should be blamed on all pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions, since the plan had been made pub­lic since 1995. He ques­tioned the lo­ca­tion of $83 mil­lion worth of non-con­struc­tion items for the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre.

Ramkissoon said re­cent state­ments by the Gov­ern­ment about build­ing five hos­pi­tals seemed to in­di­cate a move to­wards the pri­vati­sa­tion of the health sec­tor, which he had con­cerns about. He said the Gov­ern­ment should be im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of health­care, rather than seek­ing to pri­va­tise it.