Gail Alexan­der

In or­der to ease short­ages af­fect­ing the pub­lic, de­liv­ery of CDAP drugs will be once a month in­stead of every two months and moves are al­so be­ing made to change the Blood Bank sys­tem to a 100 per cent vol­un­teer sys­tem.

Al­so, Gov­ern­ment will have to over­come a Zi­ka in­fec­tion im­age if it wants to de­vel­op the San­dals To­ba­go re­sort—par­tic­u­lar­ly for "cou­ples" tourism.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh spoke about the is­sues dur­ing yes­ter­day's 2019 bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

Deyals­ingh said re­ports of CDAP drug un­avail­abil­i­ty are true. He said $36 mil­lion worth of drugs is dis­pensed an­nu­al­ly, though ad­min­is­tra­tive cost is re­al­ly $46mil­lion.

Gov­ern­ment has re­duced the dis­pens­ing fee and mon­ey saved is be­ing used to buy more drugs. Al­so, the de­liv­ery sys­tem has been changed from pro­vid­ing drugs once every two months to once a month start­ing last month, he added.

Deyals­ingh ap­pealed to phar­ma­cies to have phar­ma­cists on hand since pa­tients com­plain they can't get drugs when phar­ma­cists aren't there to dis­pense them."

He said, " I gave in­struc­tion for 13 warn­ing let­ters to be is­sued to phar­ma­cies to get their act to­geth­er. You must have phar­ma­cists from open­ing to close of hours."

His min­istry is al­so work­ing out plans for 100 per cent vol­un­teer sys­tem for the Blood Bank since the cur­rent sys­tem was risky— open­ing pa­tients up HIV or he­pati­tis in­fec­tion— and to avoid peo­ple hav­ing to pay for blood.

"What hap­pens to peo­ple who need blood and have no fam­i­ly? Blood shouldn't be bought, sold or bartered .Ten women a day who go in­to labour re­quire blood, we al­so need it for neona­tal cas­es," he said, ap­peal­ing for UNC MPs' rec­om­men­da­tions for a bet­ter sys­tem.

He said most Blood Banks will now be open on Sat­ur­days from 7 am to 3 pm. Moves are al­so be­ing made to have in­creased dial­y­sis ser­vices, ide­al­ly on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Deyals­ingh said a re­cent med­ical con­fer­ence he at­tend­ed fea­tured con­cerns from lead­ers of neigh­bour­ing is­lands on a World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion rat­ing of Cat­e­go­ry One giv­en to is­lands— in­clud­ing T&T— pin­point­ing them as lo­ca­tions where the Zi­ka virus is still present and there's risk of fu­ture out­break.

Zi­ka hit T&T in 2016. For preg­nant women in­fect­ed with Zi­ka, there's the risk of ba­bies suf­fer­ing se­vere fe­tal brain de­fects.

The min­is­ter said lead­ers all com­plained the rat­ing was dec­i­mat­ing their tourism sec­tor es­pe­cial­ly their "hon­ey­moon tourism."

"If we have to de­vel­op San­dals, we must get out of WHO"s Cat­e­go­ry One and have it moved to Three, we'll use our col­lec­tive pow­er to try to get it changed," he added.

They— in­clud­ing T&T—all agreed to send Caribbean Pub­lic Health agency da­ta on Zi­ka to WHO and seek to get the rat­ing changed.

Deyals­ingh claimed UNC MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh ap­pealed to him in 2015 to re­new the con­tract of a "Dr Gopeesingh" who's al­leged­ly the hus­band of UNC's Oropouche West MP.