An­na-Lisa Paul

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan has con­demned what he says are er­ro­neous re­ports that he in­tends to sub­ject med­ical in­terns who are not from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to a two-year in­tern­ship pro­gramme.Speak­ing to re­porters at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Khan sought to clar­i­fy the mis­in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ed in a dai­ly pa­per on Mon­day.He said: "Nev­er have I ever said, or in any in­ter­view, that the in­terns who are non-UWI in­terns would have to go through a two-year in­tern­ship.

"What I said was for­eign in­terns usu­al­ly have to do three years of tem­po­rary reg­is­tra­tion, which is not in keep­ing with equal ac­tion met­ed out to UWI in­terns."Khan con­tin­ued: "How­ev­er, since I do have them for three years, I would put in place a struc­tured ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme that is sim­i­lar to the sys­tem that I was go­ing to in­sti­tute for the UWI in­terns."

Two weeks ago, Khan an­nounced the new Med­ical Foun­da­tion House Of­fi­cer Pro­gramme, which pro­posed a two-year course with in­creased fo­cus on train­ing in emer­gency and re­sus­ci­ta­tive pro­ce­dures, ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties and crit­i­cal care.Fol­low­ing ob­jec­tions by the in­terns and the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Khan de­cid­ed to shelve that pro­pos­al.

"I nev­er said any­thing about a sec­ond-year in­tern­ship. Af­ter the first year, what they have is a tem­po­rary reg­is­tra­tion per­mit and they have to stay in the hos­pi­tals so I can struc­ture the pro­gramme dur­ing that time," he added.Asked how dis­cus­sions with med­ical or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er stake­hold­ers were pro­ceed­ing, Khan said: "It is in progress and we are de­vel­op­ing the ideas as we speak. I just want to clear up that mis­con­cep­tion, there is no two-year in­tern­ship for any­one.

"What there is and will be, is the de­vel­op­ment and start of a struc­tured ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gramme with the tem­po­rary reg­is­tra­tion of the non-UWI med­ical stu­dents. If UWI in­terns want to join, so be it but there is no two-year in­tern­ship for any­one."Re­veal­ing that he had spo­ken with Dr Samuel Ram­se­wak, dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, UWI–who is al­so pres­i­dent of the Med­ical Coun­cil of T&T–Khan said: "He un­der­stands there is a need for struc­tured train­ing for all doc­tors and spe­cial­ists."

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about his claim that the new pro­gramme was be­ing in­tro­duced as a re­sult of the find­ings in the Cot­tle Re­port, and sub­se­quent state­ments by neona­tol­o­gist Dr Petronel­la Man­ning-Al­leyne that se­nior doc­tors were at fault, Khan said: "Be­fore a doc­tor be­comes a se­nior doc­tor, he be­comes a ju­nior doc­tor, and we need to train our ju­niors bet­ter."