Leah So­rias

A big chunk of the $4.3 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the Health Min­istry has gone to the con­struc­tion and up­grade of hos­pi­tals and health fa­cil­i­ties na­tion­wide. In his 2010/2011 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an ad­mit­ted to the short­falls in the health care sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly the short­age of hos­pi­tals and the long wait­ing times at health fa­cil­i­ties. "While we made some progress, the State is still way be­hind in pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate and time­ly health care to most of our peo­ple," Dook­er­an said. He said wait­ing times for sur­gi­cal and test­ing pro­ce­dures were "far too long" and that pri­ma­ry health care was in­suf­fi­cient.

"We must avoid pa­tients from wait­ing in hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors," he said. This year's al­lo­ca­tion to health in­creased by $1 bil­lion from the last bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion. In all, the Health Min­istry re­ceived a to­tal of $4,341 mil­lion, sur­pass­ing al­lo­ca­tions for hous­ing and agri­cul­ture. Al­though not spec­i­fy­ing the cost, Dook­er­an list­ed the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal as one of Gov­ern­ment's ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture project. He said it would be com­plet­ed by 2013. That project was an­nounced dur­ing the last bud­get but no com­ple­tion date was giv­en.

Dook­er­an said it would re­duce long waits and over­crowd­ing at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. "When com­plet­ed, this 100-bed hos­pi­tal will bring sec­ondary health care ser­vices to the doorsteps of the peo­ple in South­west Trinidad who pre­vi­ous­ly has to trav­el to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal," he said. An­oth­er project for the next fis­cal year, he said, would be build­ing of a new wing at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal which would house a phar­ma­cy, lab­o­ra­to­ry, crit­i­cal care unit and a mor­tu­ary. He said it would be com­plet­ed by 2013.

He said the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre, start­ed in 2009, would be built by next year. Dook­er­an did not elab­o­rate on the com­ple­tion of the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal but list­ed the for­mu­la­tion of a project plan for its com­ple­tion as one of 13 achieve­ments of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in the first 125 days in Gov­ern­ment.

Narace re­sponds

For­mer Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace has ap­plaud­ed Dook­er­an for con­tin­u­ing sev­er­al projects start­ed un­der the PNM Gov­ern­ment. "All in all, while the de­tails (of bud­get) were short and whilst I will not be cer­tain of the in­tegri­ty of the num­bers, it looks far bet­ter than what the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had pro­ject­ed," he said. "I think this bud­get presents bet­ter con­fi­dence of peo­ple in the health sec­tor," he added. He said he was pleased to hear of the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal and the new wing of the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal. He said that would bring re­lief to per­sons seek­ing health care in South Trinidad. "I ap­plaud the min­is­ter for stay­ing out of pol­i­tics in his pre­sen­ta­tion," Narace added.