Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The 540-bed tow­er, meant to re­place the cen­tral block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH), is on track to be com­mis­sioned ear­ly next year with the fa­cil­i­ty ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of 2024.

This was an­nounced by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (NWRHA) act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Re­tired De­fence Force Ma­jor An­tho­ny Blake, who was speak­ing at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Sport and Fam­i­ly Day at St Mary’s Col­lege Sport Grounds, St Clair, on Sun­day.

Blake told mem­bers of the me­dia that the su­per­struc­ture is al­most fin­ished, adding that ten­ders for equip­ment are ex­pect­ed to be sent out soon.

“The su­per­struc­ture is ba­si­cal­ly every­thing struc­tur­al that you will see above ground. Right now, we’re in the ten­der phase for things like med­ical equip­ment—our FF&E (fur­ni­ture fit­tings and equip­ment). So, things are go­ing well and we’re look­ing at the last quar­ter next year as our com­ple­tion date and in the first quar­ter we will com­mis­sion and open that new fa­cil­i­ty,” he said.

The cen­tral block was de­mol­ished last month and ac­cord­ing to Blake, no pa­tients or staff were af­fect­ed.

“It was done safe­ly, no ma­jor ac­ci­dents, in­ci­dents, no ma­jor health and safe­ty is­sues,” he said.

The block, which pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained sur­gi­cal wards, an op­er­at­ing the­atre and clin­i­cal sup­port ser­vices, was de­cant­ed fol­low­ing the 6.9 earth­quake that struck the coun­try in Au­gust 2018. Pa­tients were re­lo­cat­ed to the St James Med­ical Com­plex in Feb­ru­ary 2020 as de­mo­li­tion works com­menced.

The new fa­cil­i­ty will see the ex­pan­sion of the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment, the in­tro­duc­tion of pae­di­atric ser­vices, an op­er­at­ing the­atre and re­cov­ery room, In­ten­sive Care Unit, High De­pen­den­cy Unit and an­cil­lary ser­vices.

“So, the old times where we would have seen a lot of peo­ple in Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in cor­ri­dors and clin­ics, that will be a thing of the past when the cen­tral block comes,” the act­ing CEO said.

Blake fur­ther dis­closed that work will soon be­gin on ex­ist­ing health cen­tres with plans to launch a num­ber of pro­grammes tar­get­ing non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases over the next 12 months.

“We will be part­ner­ing with min­istries such as the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Sport to roll out these pro­grammes be­cause we’re big on pre­ven­tion, not just see­ing peo­ple when they come to the hos­pi­tal,” he said.

Mean­while, he as­sured that the NWRHA was prepar­ing for Mon­key­pox un­der the guid­ance of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO), Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) and World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO).

T&T cur­rent­ly has two con­firmed cas­es of the in­fec­tious dis­ease which caus­es a painful rash, en­larged lymph nodes and fever.

The sport and fam­i­ly day is the NWRHA’s first in more than five years. The au­thor­i­ty em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000 peo­ple in Trinidad.