Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

From as ear­ly as 2 am yes­ter­day, peo­ple be­gan lin­ing up out­side the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain for free med­ical ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the US Navy hos­pi­tal ship, USNS Com­fort.

By the time screen­ing be­gan just af­ter 8 am, hun­dreds were wait­ing for treat­ment in ar­eas in­clud­ing adult and pae­di­atric med­i­cine, den­tal care, op­tom­e­try, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, women’s health, and der­ma­tol­ogy. But by mid­day, sev­er­al of those ser­vices were closed off.

In­side the venue, of­fi­cer-in-charge, Lt Com­man­der Thomas Rossiter, said the team catered for about 400–600 pa­tients per day and that by 11 am, rough­ly 150 had al­ready been seen.

“I was told that we had pa­tients as ear­ly as 4 am start­ing to show up. The turnout looks very good. This is our sixth stop and we’ve had very good turnout here,” Rossiter said.

The USNS Com­fort’s mis­sion has so far vis­it­ed Grena­da, Pana­ma, Ecuador, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and Cos­ta Ri­ca. Rossiter said the health is­sues pre­sent­ed in T&T were sim­i­lar to those in oth­er coun­tries, and his team usu­al­ly trav­els with sur­plus med­ica­tion to do­nate to the host na­tion.

“As we’re de­part­ing, we give those back to the host na­tion—in this event, Trinidad and To­ba­go—and you man­age and dis­perse them as you see fit,” he said. “There are peo­ple in need who re­al­ly want help, and oth­ers who just want well­ness checks or new glass­es so read­ing is a bit eas­i­er.”

While some pa­tients left sat­is­fied, oth­ers—in­clud­ing those who trav­elled from as far as south Trinidad—said they were turned away with­out be­ing screened and crit­i­cised the process as dis­or­gan­ised.

“They were not or­gan­ised. Peo­ple were stand­ing around, no­body say­ing any­thing. It was chaos, to­tal chaos,” said Aly­cia Jef­fers, who ar­rived at 3.30 am.

“Dis­ap­point­ing. I will not be re­turn­ing.”

Leon Guy, of Laven­tille, who queued from 3.15 am and as­signed him­self num­ber 35 in a self-made line, al­so left with­out den­tal care.

“We form we own lines and look, I ain’t get through... the prices they charg­ing you to take out a teeth (lo­cal­ly), it re­al ex­pen­sive,” he said, vow­ing to re­turn at mid­night to try again.

Heart pa­tient Joe Leps said he tried to be seen be­cause his next ap­point­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex is not un­til De­cem­ber, but gave up be­cause of the long wait.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who was at the venue, ac­knowl­edged the strain on the pub­lic health sys­tem.

“I in­her­it­ed one faced with a lot of un­met med­ical de­mands. For the past three months, we have been try­ing to ad­dress that, but it takes time to get sys­tems in place,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who toured the USNS Com­fort where surg­eries were be­ing con­duct­ed, al­so promised more health mis­sions in the fu­ture.

“I have in­her­it­ed a sys­tem that needs a lot of help and has many chal­lenges,” she said.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Dr Rishi Seecha­ran said one of the biggest is­sues was the long wait­ing list for surg­eries. A spe­cial com­mit­tee re­viewed cas­es from all five re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to pri­ori­tise pa­tients. About 100 were se­lect­ed for treat­ment aboard the ship.

The USNS Com­fort’s med­ical teams will con­tin­ue ser­vices at NA­PA from 8 am to­day.