Al­most a decade af­ter plans for the new Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal at Sig­nal Hill were an­nounced and the sod turned to be­gin con­struc­tion, the $750 mil­lion health fa­cil­i­ty ac­cept­ed pa­tients yes­ter­day. Fifty-sev­en in­pa­tients from the old Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal at Fort King George, trav­elled by am­bu­lance with po­lice es­cort to the new 100-bed health in­sti­tu­tion.

Six chil­dren were ad­mit­ted in­to the pae­di­atric ward, while sev­en in­pa­tients were tak­en to the sur­gi­cal ward from as ear­ly as 8.43 am. Ten ex­pec­tant moth­ers oc­cu­pied ma­ter­ni­ty. A fur­ther eight pa­tients were di­rect­ed to the med­ical ward. Twen­ty-six pa­tients were ad­mit­ted to the ac­ci­dent and emer­gency sec­tion of the hos­pi­tal.

Pa­tients were ac­com­pa­nied by rel­a­tives dur­ing the trans­fer man­aged by the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA), the Di­vi­sion of Health and So­cial Ser­vices and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Sec­re­tary of Health and So­cial Ser­vices Clau­dia Groome-Duke said it was an his­toric day for the health sec­tor in the sis­ter isle and ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion.

New Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is op­er­a­tional

Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the TRHA, said the state-of-the-art health­care fa­cil­i­ty was de­signed to meet the needs of the grow­ing pop­u­la­tion and to ac­com­mo­date the chang­ing face of health­care in To­ba­go. Ser­vices in the neona­tal de­part­ment, four op­er­at­ing the­atres, med­ical imag­ing and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, as well as 19 spe­cial­ty func­tions were avail­able.

The lat­est se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems had been in­tro­duced at the hos­pi­tal from the elec­tron­ic lock­ing sys­tems to ba­by mon­i­tors. With 18 new house of­fi­cers, spe­cial­ists and 50 nurs­es added to the staff com­pli­ment it was hoped the cus­tomer ser­vice would im­prove.