Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has ac­cused the me­dia of “poi­son­ing the pop­u­la­tion” and fail­ing to high­light the good work be­ing done by staff in the health­care sys­tem.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture added at the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (ER­HA) Ex­cel­lence Awards ti­tled Cel­e­brat­ing Our East­ern Gems, at the Bish­op Anstey High School East on Sat­ur­day evening, Deyals­ingh an­nounced a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment for San­gre Grande.

He said by March to April 2024, res­i­dents of that com­mu­ni­ty and en­vi­rons should be able to utilise their new three-storey, 106-bed hos­pi­tal.

In Sep­tem­ber this year, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) an­nounced that the in­te­ri­or con­struc­tion, the me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing in­stal­la­tions and ex­ter­nal works were all that need­ed to be com­plet­ed on the hos­pi­tal. Back then these tasks were all over 50 per cent com­plete.

With the hos­pi­tal well on the way, the Health Min­is­ter pro­posed a con­test for the ER­HA staff, when it of­fi­cial­ly opens.

“But I have a chal­lenge, doh clap too soon ... so we open Point Fortin, new Point Fortin go­ing re­al good eh (sic), we open Ari­ma, Ari­ma is fast be­com­ing and get­ting the rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing the best place to be in T&T if you sick eh, so your chal­lenge is when we open Grande you are to take Ari­ma off the pedestal,” Deyals­ingh urged.

His en­cour­age­ment came as he con­grat­u­lat­ed and thanked the health­care pro­fes­sion­als for their ef­forts and hard work as he said it was of­ten over­looked and un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

“Yours is a thank­less job, but tonight we are here to give thanks,” he said.

“You health­care providers do not get the pub­lic ac­claim that you de­serve,” he added.

Deyals­ingh re­called that when he was an Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor and Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was the Health Min­is­ter he told her then that the gov­ern­ment would not get any thanks for the hun­dreds and thou­sands of mir­a­cles that the free pub­lic health sys­tem pro­duces every day.

“Let one thing go wrong and the me­dia will cru­ci­fy you, those were my words,” Deyals­ingh said.

This year the ER­HA made news head­lines for fir­ing a doc­tor who was con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing and al­so launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion sur­round­ing the death of three-year-old Ari­ah Shep­pard.

The tod­dler died on Ju­ly 11 af­ter falling ill at her grand­moth­er’s house at St He­le­na Vil­lage, Matelot.

There have been sev­er­al re­ports of the con­stant clo­sure of sev­er­al health fa­cil­i­ties in the ER­HA.

“Let one thing go wrong and the me­dia poi­sons the pop­u­la­tion and for­get the 999,000 good that you did, that is the so­ci­ety that we live in,” Deyals­ingh said.

De­spite this, the min­is­ter asked the au­di­ence to give a heart­felt round of ap­plause for ER­HA CEO Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt, who he said was there for au­thor­i­ty dur­ing the good and bad times.

Some of the night’s awardees in­clud­ed Sher­i­fa Ali who won the In­di­vid­ual of the Year, Aux­il­iary Staff award and Dr Damion Bas­deo won In­di­vid­ual of the Year, Med­ical Pro­fes­sion.

The Best Man­aged Fa­cil­i­ty award went to the San­gre Grande En­hanced Health Cen­tre.