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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Cabinet weighs $$ for Ebola medics

by

20141108

Cab­i­net is giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to the re­mu­ner­a­tion of health care work­ers who may have to treat Ebo­la cas­es, Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan says.He said so in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed the cur­rent world­wide con­cerns and T&T's readi­ness for the dead­ly virus.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke had called for ex­tra re­mu­ner­a­tion and an in­sur­ance of at least $10 mil­lion for health care work­ers who will be asked to work in the spe­cial Ebo­la unit Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to set up to deal with any sus­pect­ed cas­es of the virus.Yes­ter­day, Khan said while some may have at­tempt­ed to prof­it from the mat­ter and ped­dle fear and hys­te­ria, he was pre­sent­ing the facts on it.

"Sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made in mak­ing T&T ready to con­trol any pos­si­ble out­break of Ebo­la through good prepa­ra­tion, proac­tive pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion and rapid re­sponse, iso­la­tion and treat­ment, con­tact trac­ing, co-or­di­na­tion be­tween agen­cies and in­vest­ment in emer­gency re­sponse," he said.

Re­count­ing Gov­ern­ment's ac­tion in the is­sue so far, in­clud­ing spear­head­ing a Cari­com meet­ing on this, Khan said the train­ing of staff at health fa­cil­i­ties and ports of en­try to de­tect and iso­late sus­pect­ed cas­es was on­go­ing Cab­i­net had al­so ap­proved im­por­ta­tion of an Odu­lair Unit two-bed Ebo­la treat­ment unit. Up­grades to al­low for han­dling of any Ebo­la cas­es have be­gun at the Cau­ra Ebo­la Treat­ment Cen­tre and Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, he said.

Khan said 20 hand-held ther­mal scan­ners for ports of en­try have been or­dered and are ex­pect­ed in two weeks.Thir­ty Haz­mat (Haz­ardous Ma­te­r­i­al) Lev­el A suits are al­so ex­pect­ed in four weeks. Spec­i­fi­ca­tions for two mass screen­ing ther­mal scan­ners are be­ing eval­u­at­ed and are ex­pect­ed to be or­dered with­in the next week, with de­liv­ery in three weeks.

Per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment has been pur­chased, in­clud­ing cat­e­go­ry three cov­er­alls (Haz­mat suit type), N95 masks, over­hoods, over­boots, rub­ber boots and face shields. Stan­dard pro­tec­tive equip­ment was dis­trib­uted to all health fa­cil­i­ties be­tween Oc­to­ber 3 and 19 and Cat­e­go­ry 3 cov­er­alls will be de­liv­ered by No­vem­ber 19, he added.


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