Yvonne Webb

The 70 Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es ex­pect­ed to take up two-year gov­ern­ment con­tracts at the end of this month are like­ly to be the last batch of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from that coun­try be­ing hired by the State. T&T has had a long-stand­ing arrange­ment with med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Cu­ba and the Philip­pines.

But Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said he was now look­ing to coun­tries in the Com­mon­wealth to source med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to fill the lo­cal short­age of hu­man re­sources. "I am look­ing at how the sys­tem works, every two years the Cubans come and then they have to go back, so every year we have to re­view the amount of mon­ey be­ing spent. No­body stays here," he said.

Khan said so in an in­ter­view af­ter Wednes­day's open­ing of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Teach­ing and Stu­dent Fa­cil­i­ties at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Mo­ments ear­li­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ad­dress­ing the same func­tion, an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the hir­ing of the 70 Cuban health pro­fes­sion­als, 56 nurs­es and 14 doc­tors on two-year con­tracts.

She said they were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive lat­er this month to as­sist in strength­en­ing the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty at the pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions. The Prime Min­is­ter said there was a crit­i­cal short­age of health pro­fes­sion­als. She said there was short­age of 2,900 nurs­es. She did not give fig­ures for doc­tors.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Khan said "I am look­ing at the Com­mon­wealth coun­tries, be­ing In­dia, Nige­ria-whom we al­ready have a re­la­tion­ship with-South Africa, Eng­land and Cana­da, if they want to come." He said a lot of na­tion­als abroad had al­so ex­pressed an in­ter­est in com­ing back to work in the pub­lic health sec­tor.