An­na-Lisa Paul

Of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health and the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) are seek­ing the pub­lic's as­sis­tance in de­vis­ing a method where­by emer­gency health per­son­nel can be made to feel safe, so they can re­spond to calls in a time­ly man­ner, from res­i­dents liv­ing in "high-risk crime ar­eas."The in­vi­ta­tion was is­sued by the NWRHA's CEO Ju­dith Bali­ram dur­ing a pub­lic board meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Li­brary, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Bali­ram was re­spond­ing to a con­cern by Al­der­man Rono Cal­len­der of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion that the in­sis­tence of EHS work­ers not to go to high-risk ar­eas with­out a po­lice es­cort had led to the un­time­ly death of an el­der­ly Port-of-Spain woman.Cal­len­der raised the is­sue dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, in which he re­lat­ed that a woman known as Ms Mar­garet, of Ri­ley Trace, East Dry Riv­er, died on Ju­ly 9, while await­ing med­ical at­ten­tion.

Re­call­ing the facts yes­ter­day, Cal­len­der said 45 min­utes elapsed be­tween the time he con­tact­ed the EHS and the time the work­ers ar­rived on the scene be­cause they had re­fused to en­ter the area with­out a po­lice es­cort.Cal­len­der said the woman had com­plained of feel­ing un­well but by the time the am­bu­lance ar­rived she was al­ready dead.

High­light­ing the is­sue, Cal­len­der said the very same EHS work­ers were not "afraid" to stop to pur­chase food and oth­er sup­plies in the Port-of-Spain area, yet they in­sist­ed on a po­lice es­cort when they had to re­spond to calls for help by the pub­lic.In­di­cat­ing they were will­ing to work with the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and the Min­istries of Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress the mat­ter, Bali­ram in­vit­ed sug­ges­tions on how that could be achieved.

The NWRHA host­ed its an­nu­al pub­lic board meet­ing yes­ter­day, dur­ing which they pre­sent­ed an overview of the projects cur­rent­ly un­der­way and fu­ture plans.Re­veal­ing that of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to turn the sod to be­gin con­struc­tion of the new Care­nage Health Cen­tre to­mor­row, Bali­ram said they re­mained com­mit­ted to oth­er projects that had al­ready start­ed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.Those in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a new el­e­va­tor at the north block, con­struc­tion of a plat­form for a CT scan­ner and paving works, he not­ed.

Bali­ram said the NWRHA had been work­ing to im­prove its ser­vices and in­fra­struc­ture at PoS­GH, the St James Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and St Ann's Hos­pi­tal, as they sought to ex­pand op­er­a­tions through­out the re­gion.En­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to con­tin­ue part­ner­ing with of­fi­cials to move the process for­ward and sat­is­fy their needs, she said the in­tro­duc­tion of ex­tend­ed clin­ic hours was one ex­am­ple of the au­thor­i­ty's at­tempt to bet­ter serve the pub­lic.

Sev­er­al out­reach ini­tia­tives, both at the school and com­mu­ni­ty lev­els, have al­so been in­tro­duced.These in­clude health and well­ness fairs, school health pro­grammes at both the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els, health work­shops of­fer­ing free test­ing in a num­ber of ar­eas, men­tal health work­shops and spe­cial­ist pe­di­atric clin­ics.

Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion of the NWRHA's per­for­mance and achieve­ment record for 2013/2014, Bali­ram said it had car­ried out sev­er­al projects at health cen­tres in San Juan, Ox­ford Street, San­ta Cruz and Diego Mar­tin as part of its man­date to im­prove the qual­i­ty of ser­vices of­fered to the pub­lic. New equip­ment was al­so ac­quired and with in­fra­struc­tur­al up­grades con­tin­u­ing, Bali­ram said ef­forts were al­so made to set­tle out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with month­ly and dai­ly paid staff.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, Bali­ram said while the plan for the new Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal had been sub­mit­ted to the min­istry on Ju­ly 8, it was not in­clud­ed in the 2013/2014 fis­cal year.The au­thor­i­ties al­so hope to start work on the new Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre and has promised that short-term mea­sures to im­prove the phys­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties at the PoS­GH will be com­plet­ed soon.