Raphael John-Lall

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan says the Min­istry of Health has done a lot of work in 2012 but has even more projects planned for 2013. "I do not want to say my per­for­mance is 'good' work but I feel that I can do much bet­ter and our ser­vices can keep im­prov­ing next year. We have a lot more to do," he said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

On Sat­ur­day, in the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry, the Gov­ern­ment and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Chi­nese Em­bassy and the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment signed an agree­ment for the pro­vi­sion of a con­ces­sion­al loan of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$900 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of the Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in Preysal, Cou­va.

In a sep­a­rate cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day, Khan and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so toured the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal where the Prime Min­ster stat­ed it will serve as a place to of­fer health care and teach­ing ser­vices. Khan said he was work­ing with Ude­cott, Nipdec and the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) to de­vel­op a co­her­ent in­fra­struc­ture plan for the coun­try's health sys­tem.

He said on the cus­tomer ser­vice side, pa­tients and the pub­lic were start­ing to see im­prove­ments. "We have been suc­cess­ful the ser­vice ori­ent­ed side. Peo­ple are say­ing now that the ser­vices in the hos­pi­tals are start­ing to come up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards be­cause of the changes they are see­ing," he said. Next year he al­so wants to have health cen­tres opened 24 hours.

"I am al­so de­vel­op­ing the pri­ma­ry health sec­tor. I will need to have pri­ma­ry health care doc­tors to achieve the goal to have these health care cen­tres opened 24 hours," he said. Apart from the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, he al­so wants to have oth­er teach­ing hos­pi­tals es­tab­lished around the coun­try.

"We want to turn Mount Hope in­to a teach­ing hos­pi­tal, we are al­so look­ing at do­ing the same in San­gre Grande and the same thing done with the hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go," he said. He al­so spoke about "med­ical ed­u­ca­tion" and de­vel­op­ing the sec­tor along with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice. "This is one of the big ar­eas we want to de­vel­op. We want to at­tract off­shore med­ical schools in the same way St George's Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty in Grena­da and oth­er sim­i­lar in­sti­tu­tions do it," he said.