RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, UWI St Au­gus­tine, Dr Ger­ard Hutchin­son, says the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal is in ur­gent need of at­ten­tion.

His com­ments fol­low con­cerns raised by Idi Stu­art, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), who re­cent­ly de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as “an­ti­quat­ed” and “un­fit for mod­ern psy­chi­atric care.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Hutchin­son ac­knowl­edged that “there are build­ings in St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal that are in a very di­lap­i­dat­ed state and ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al work is need­ed to ad­dress this.”

He not­ed that while there will al­ways be a need for a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, the num­ber of in­pa­tient beds could be re­duced if prop­er com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vices were de­vel­oped. “Sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment is need­ed to en­sure ad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ty men­tal health care and hous­ing re­sources,” he said, adding that “ma­jor up­grades at St Ann’s are al­so nec­es­sary for pa­tients and staff to feel com­fort­able work­ing there.”

Ap­pear­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, TTNNA pres­i­dent Stu­art said the cen­tu­ry-old hos­pi­tal had rust­ed plumb­ing, in­op­er­a­ble win­dows, and pos­si­ble as­bestos con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. He hoped the 2026 bud­get would ad­dress these is­sues.

“Most of the old­er build­ings have win­dows that can’t even open — they’re seized and rust­ed shut,” Stu­art said. “If an air qual­i­ty test were done, we’d like­ly find as­bestos. The plumb­ing is old, rust­ed met­al. These are ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture fail­ures that make it un­safe and out­dat­ed.”

Stu­art em­pha­sized that psy­chi­atric care should pri­mar­i­ly be com­mu­ni­ty-based, with hos­pi­tals like St Ann’s serv­ing on­ly as a last re­sort. How­ev­er, he said the op­po­site has be­come the re­al­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

While re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties have be­gun tak­ing more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for psy­chi­atric care, Stu­art said St Ann’s re­mains the main hub for most pa­tients, un­der­scor­ing the need for both in­fra­struc­ture over­haul and sys­temic re­form.

Turn­ing to the is­sue of nurs­es’ wages, Stu­art ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over de­lays in salary ne­go­ti­a­tions, not­ing that health­care pro­fes­sion­als are still be­ing paid at 2013 lev­els.

“It is re­al­ly in­sult­ing for nurs­ing and med­ical per­son­nel to be paid these salaries in 2025,” he said. “We are way be­hind oth­er sec­tors — some are at 2019 or even 2022 lev­els — while health­care re­mains stuck at 2013.”

Ne­go­ti­a­tions, he said, stalled ear­li­er this year due to elec­tions but are ex­pect­ed to re­sume fol­low­ing the 2025–2026 bud­get.

Stu­art warned that the chron­ic short­age of nurs­es con­tin­ues to crip­ple the pub­lic health sys­tem, af­fect­ing every hos­pi­tal from St Ann’s to Mount Hope Women’s.

“Our pa­tients are feel­ing it — de­lays in surg­eries, longer wait­ing times, and a de­cline in qual­i­ty of care,” he said. “It’s get­ting worse on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

He re­vealed that ma­ter­ni­ty wards, in par­tic­u­lar, are fac­ing “al­most dai­ly com­plaints” over a lack of ba­sic sup­plies, in­clud­ing bed sheets, ink pads, and sy­ringes.

To ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, Stu­art urged the Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Health In­sur­ance Sys­tem and di­rect spe­cialised fund­ing to­ward health­care, sim­i­lar to the prop­er­ty tax sys­tem used to fund re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

He al­so called for a Health Sec­tor Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Au­thor­i­ty to stan­dard­ise care across fa­cil­i­ties and en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty in ser­vice de­liv­ery.