RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For more than a year, med­ical or­der­ly Na­tal­ie Hors­ford has limped in­to work with a walk­ing stick, her body wracked with pain and her spir­it worn by dis­ap­point­ment.

But yes­ter­day, the moth­er of one fi­nal­ly broke down in tears af­ter re­ceiv­ing as­sur­ances from Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe that her long-ig­nored in­jury leave and ben­e­fits would at last be ad­dressed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Hors­ford said she has worked at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al and Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal for 18 years but got in­jured in 2024 in­side a mal­func­tion­ing el­e­va­tor. This has left her bat­tling not on­ly with phys­i­cal agony but al­so with fi­nan­cial hard­ship.

“Right now I’m go­ing home with bare­ly noth­ing, just $2,000 a month be­cause they are de­duct­ing my salary,” she cried.

“I have been in a lot of pain. Even though I was in­jured in the hos­pi­tal el­e­va­tor, no­body has reached out to help me un­til now,” she added, wip­ing away tears.

Re­call­ing the day the rou­tine el­e­va­tor ride turned in­to a ter­ri­fy­ing or­deal, Hors­ford said: “The el­e­va­tor went up to lev­el 17 and came down rapid­ly to lev­el 12. My life just flashed be­fore my eyes. I held on to the rail­ing and prayed.”

The el­e­va­tor even­tu­al­ly stopped, but not be­fore jerk­ing her up and down sev­er­al times.

She said med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions lat­er re­vealed in­juries from her neck down to her spine, with pres­sure on a nerve that now af­fects her left leg.

Show­ing her doc­u­ments, Hors­ford said doc­tors have deemed her fit to work on­ly with al­tered du­ties—re­strict­ed to sit­ting at a desk, an­swer­ing phones, and tak­ing mes­sages. But even that has proven un­bear­able.

“I can’t sit for long hours. I can’t stand for long hours,” she ex­plained. “Even af­ter work, wait­ing for a taxi is very painful. Some­times I don’t feel like com­ing to work at all be­cause when I get out of bed, there is pain,” she said.

With her salary be­ing de­duct­ed, Hors­ford said she had no choice but to bor­row mon­ey just to sur­vive.

“I have a son go­ing to school, and I could bare­ly man­age,” she added.

De­spite vis­its to or­tho­pe­dic and neu­ro­sur­gi­cal clin­ics, on­go­ing coun­selling, and re­peat­ed at­tempts to seek help, Hors­ford said no one from the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty reached out to guide her or re­solve her sit­u­a­tion.

But yes­ter­day, while at­tend­ing the ac­cred­i­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny of the hos­pi­tal, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe met with Hors­ford and promised to look in­to her case.

Al­though he had no pri­or knowl­edge of the Hors­ford case, Bo­doe said he would im­me­di­ate­ly in­struct the chair­man of the SWRHA to in­ves­ti­gate and ad­dress the mat­ter, in­clud­ing the de­duc­tions to her salary.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about el­e­va­tor safe­ty, Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged long­stand­ing main­te­nance is­sues at the hos­pi­tal, which opened in 2014 and is now over a decade old.

“The lack of main­te­nance is some­thing we are very much aware of,” he said, ex­plain­ing that the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty in­her­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant debts and in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges. “Some­thing like an el­e­va­tor, of course, is a pri­or­i­ty,” he added.