Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is ad­vis­ing fam­i­lies whose loved ones died in sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to take le­gal ac­tion. He claimed un­qual­i­fied doc­tors have been per­form­ing surg­eries and spe­cial­ist pro­ce­dures at the hos­pi­tal with­out cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Med­ical Board of T&T.

Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor said at a ple­nary sit­ting last month that there is no li­a­bil­i­ty and while there are spe­cial­ists who are not yet reg­is­tered with the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go, they are ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing the care need­ed to To­bag­o­ni­ans.

Breb­nor de­fend­ed the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the act­ing spe­cial­ists at Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, ex­plain­ing that while they are not yet cer­ti­fied by the Med­ical Board they are cov­ered by the de­part­ment heads, who are ful­ly reg­is­tered spe­cial­ists.

She ex­plained that each de­part­ment at the hos­pi­tal is head­ed by a spe­cial­ist med­ical of­fi­cer or con­sul­tant reg­is­tered with the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go. She added that spe­cial­ists must ob­tain qual­i­fi­ca­tions such as a Doc­tor of Med­i­cine, Doc­tor of Pub­lic Health board cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the US, or a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion of train­ing from the UK be­fore reg­is­ter­ing with the lo­cal med­ical board.

How­ev­er, when pressed by Mor­ris to con­firm whether the four act­ing spe­cial­ists were ap­proved by the Med­ical Board to per­form spe­cial­ist func­tions, Breb­nor did not give a di­rect an­swer. In­stead, she list­ed their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, in­clud­ing de­grees and spe­cial­i­sa­tions ob­tained abroad, and main­tained that be­cause they worked un­der de­part­ment heads who are reg­is­tered, they are legal­ly cov­ered.

“The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process ac­tu­al­ly takes a while,” she ad­mit­ted. “Some of them have sub­mit­ted their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and are await­ing a re­sponse. The hos­pi­tal has the cov­er­age that it re­quires via the med­ical-le­gal re­quire­ments, which is, as I said … be­cause the head is cov­ered, every­one who works un­der the head is cov­ered.”

Mor­ris ar­gued that le­gal and med­ical li­a­bil­i­ty could not sim­ply be trans­ferred in that way. He re­ferred to the leaked in­ter­nal memo from a se­nior med­ical of­fi­cer who al­leged­ly warned that there could be se­ri­ous le­gal con­se­quences if un­reg­is­tered doc­tors con­tin­ued to per­form spe­cial­ist pro­ce­dures.

Mor­ris said: “You would have heard the sec­re­tary, stum­bling, mum­bling her­self, try­ing to ex­plain, how on God’s heav­en­ly you have a sit­u­a­tion where per­sons who are not cer­ti­fied by the med­ical board are per­form­ing the func­tions of spe­cial­ists.”

He al­leged that un­qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als are per­form­ing surg­eries and there are at least two un­cer­ti­fied per­sons in or­thopaedics and nephrol­o­gy. He de­scribed it as a “se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous breach” that put lives at risk.

Mor­ris called for im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion from the Med­ical Board.

“This is a mat­ter of life and death and when the Sec­re­tary was asked whether there were any is­sues to be con­cerned about, she ba­si­cal­ly told us no, and she went on to even say there’s no med­ical le­gal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. But here it is, in black and white, that there are sig­nif­i­cant le­gal con­se­quences.”

He al­so warned Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine that the TRHA faces le­gal ac­tion.

“Every fam­i­ly who would have had a rel­a­tive that passed through the health sys­tem and if they feel in some way there would have been some med­ical mal­prac­tice … there are se­ri­ous le­gal ram­i­fi­ca­tions and con­se­quences.”

Mor­ris en­cour­aged af­fect­ed fam­i­lies to come for­ward.

“There is le­gal re­dress for you, and we must not al­low this to be swept un­der the car­pet,” he said.

Nei­ther Breb­nor nor Au­gus­tine could be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.