Sto­ries by KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) is pump­ing $12 mil­lion in­to the ren­o­va­tion of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH), to bring it in line with the more re­cent San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal (SFTH).

Min­is­ter of Health Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed $34 mil­lion for work on the SFGH, Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for need­ed re­fur­bish­ments. Ac­cord­ing to SWRHA CEO Dr Bri­an Ar­mour, a study on hos­pi­tal meals showed that pa­tients at SFTH ate more than those at SFGH, who rarely had an ap­petite. It fur­ther found that the en­vi­ron­ment played a part.

With the work ex­pect­ed to be com­plete by Feb­ru­ary 2025, Ar­mour said it will in­clude a new roof on the old San Fer­nan­do Colo­nial Hos­pi­tal and a paint job. There will al­so be an up­grad­ed foy­er and mod­ernised pa­tient care with the re­lo­cat­ing of bath­rooms to in­side the wards. He said the SWRHA will de­mol­ish all derelict struc­tures on the com­pound.

When com­plet­ed, Ar­mour said the SFGH will be more than a hos­pi­tal but rather a place of health and well­ness.

“We are try­ing to pre­serve the her­itage look. It is colo­nial ar­chi­tec­ture. We have al­ready done part of the hos­pi­tal and the first tow­er has a new roof. We have al­so com­plet­ed the roof for the sec­ond psy­chi­a­try ward, so it is a new roof that will en­vel­op the whole hos­pi­tal. Apart from that and paint­ing, as I said, it is grounds, roads, and drains. We got ad­vice that we had to fix the drains be­fore we paved the roads. We al­so have beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the land­scape,” Ar­mour said.

Re­gard­ing med­ical ser­vices, Ar­mour said 96 per cent of pa­tients at the Emer­gency De­part­ments get a bed with­in 24 hours of their ar­rival, with most peo­ple get­ting one with­in eight hours. He said the Min­istry of Health (MoH) re­viewed the time lim­it pro­to­cols and rolled out a pol­i­cy to re­ceive, triage, in­ves­ti­gate and get pa­tients to a ward with­in six hours. Pa­tients suf­fer­ing from life-threat­en­ing ill­ness­es, mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dents, and life or limb-threat­en­ing in­juries get seen with­in min­utes, he ex­plained.

While there are calls for more med­ical staff and fa­cil­i­ties, Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed that Gov­ern­ment could not build enough hos­pi­tals to care for sick peo­ple, so its ac­tion was more a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure. He said the Hearts Project, which seeks to help hy­per­ten­sive pa­tients and the di­a­bet­ic boot camps they fa­cil­i­tat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced pa­tients’ blood pres­sure and high blood sug­ar lev­els, re­sult­ing in few­er peo­ple end­ing up in Non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­ease (NCD) clin­ics. He said the min­istry is fo­cus­ing on treat­ing health is­sues at the pri­ma­ry lev­el, as a healthy pop­u­la­tion re­quires less need for sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­el health­care.

Deyals­ingh said al­though he had ex­pect­ed back­lash for re­cent­ly call­ing out some fast food brands for their con­tri­bu­tion to health is­sues among the cit­i­zens, there was none. He said the pub­lic and me­dia con­ver­sa­tions fol­low­ing his ex­pose were phe­nom­e­nal­ly con­struc­tive.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi, who was al­so present, said his min­istry will es­tab­lish eco­nom­ic spaces where SWRHA de­mol­ish­es old struc­tures to es­tab­lish busi­ness spaces. He said there are no food op­tions for staff and vis­i­tors on the hos­pi­tal com­pound de­spite the thou­sands of peo­ple who pass through it every week.