Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has an­nounced that the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal will be­gin ac­cept­ing pa­tients be­fore the end of the year, as the min­istry moves to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise the fa­cil­i­ty af­ter a decade of lim­it­ed use.

Speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing a lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion event at Pe­nal Sec­ondary yes­ter­day, Dr Bo­doe said the open­ing ful­fils a promise made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar more than 12 years ago.

“It was the promise she again made on the cam­paign trail that this hos­pi­tal would be opened,” he said.

He added that steps have now been put in place to open the hos­pi­tal on a phased ba­sis, af­ter it re­mained un­der­utilised for the past ten years.

Com­plet­ed in 2015 as a ma­jor pae­di­atric and adult care cen­tre, the hos­pi­tal un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion was used dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Dr Bo­doe said the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment has be­gun for­mal plan­ning to bring the fa­cil­i­ty in­to ser­vice, in­clud­ing staffing, equip­ment as­sess­ments, and a phased roll­out of med­ical ser­vices.

“The process of op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion is on­go­ing. It will be step by step, but we’re hop­ing that be­fore the end of the year, pa­tients will ac­tu­al­ly be seen in that hos­pi­tal,” he said.

He added that staffing plans are pro­gress­ing:

“At this point in time, we will have suf­fi­cient staff in terms of the plan we have. We’ve iden­ti­fied those staff al­ready, and we will con­tin­ue to re­cruit more, be­cause we not on­ly need nurs­es and doc­tors, but oth­er staff—lab tech­ni­cians, cler­i­cal work­ers, and man­agers,” Dr Bo­doe ex­plained.

The min­is­ter con­firmed that the hos­pi­tal will open in stages, with ser­vices ex­pand­ing over time.

Last week, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) raised con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to ac­ti­vate the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, warn­ing that the move could place ad­di­tion­al strain on the na­tion­al health­care sys­tem.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al par­ents from south Trinidad who trav­el to Mount Hope for can­cer treat­ment for their chil­dren wel­comed the news.

Ef­forts to con­tact TTNNA pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful. - Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va