KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

There are plans to trans­form the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in­to a pre­mier teach­ing hos­pi­tal that would make T&T a cen­tre of ex­cel­lence for med­ical train­ing in this part of the world.

While med­ical cam­pus­es al­ready ex­ist at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh told Par­lia­ment the pro­pos­al would not down­grade the teach­ing at any oth­er hos­pi­tal.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Na­tion­al Bud­get de­bate on Tues­day, Deyals­ingh said it will be a med­ical cam­pus be­fit­ting the cap­i­tal city, and the Min­istry of Health (MoH) has al­ready signed an agree­ment with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. Last Sat­ur­day, Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials met with Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty man­age­ment to dis­cuss the de­tails. 

“This is go­ing to be a place for med­ical ed­u­ca­tion. This is go­ing to be a place for schol­ar­ship. This is go­ing to be a place for en­hanced health­care. This is go­ing to be a place where our doc­tors, nurs­es, phar­ma­cists and al­lied health­care work­ers, EMTs, can find the most up-to-date world-class train­ing and then fun­nel in­to the health ecosys­tem ei­ther here or abroad. It is go­ing to dri­ve in­no­va­tion,” Deyals­ingh said.

The min­istry will as­sem­ble a joint com­mit­tee by month’s end with an in­fra­struc­tur­al re­view and de­vel­op­ment frame­work to fol­low in the com­ing months. Deyals­ingh said some young doc­tors can­not find jobs in T&T be­cause ex­ist­ing va­can­cies are for spe­cial­ists and sub-spe­cial­ists. He said UWI’s med­ical pro­gramme has 20 spe­cial­i­ties, which the new cam­pus will in­cor­po­rate, in­clud­ing nurs­ing care, pe­di­atric nurs­ing and phar­ma­cy. 

Deyals­ingh said the first in­take will be for on­col­o­gy stu­dents on Jan­u­ary 31, 2024. 

“I urge our young doc­tors to come on board be­cause the op­por­tu­ni­ty you may not be get­ting now is be­cause we have enough young doc­tors. What we do not have enough of, and the doc­tors know this, you know, are spe­cial­ists and sub-spe­cial­ists. We do not have enough pe­di­atric car­di­ol­o­gists. We do not have enough nurs­es to talk about asth­ma,” he said.

Deyals­ingh ad­mit­ted there is a need for more catheter­i­sa­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty in T&T, and in deal­ing with car­dio­vas­cu­lar ac­ci­dents, the min­istry recog­nised that San Fer­nan­do needs a catheter­i­sa­tion lab­o­ra­to­ry (Cath lab). He was hope­ful there would be an op­er­a­tionalised unit in the next fis­cal year. The MoH is build­ing the Cath lab in part­ner­ship with the Aus­tri­an Gov­ern­ment. 

“The Aus­tri­an Gov­ern­ment had some re­arrange­ments of their min­istries, not min­is­ters, and the Cath lab project was shift­ed from one min­istry un­der the Aus­tri­an gov­ern­ment to an­oth­er.”

He said the Aus­tri­an High Com­mis­sion vis­it­ed T&T in Ju­ly and the Gov­ern­ment was able to fast-track the project. Deyals­ingh said he took a note to Cab­i­net in Au­gust and re­ceived ap­proval for the project with a $13 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in this year’s Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme.

The min­is­ter al­so dis­cussed pro­grammes to tack­le high rates of di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion. Dr Dave Har­nanan con­duct­ed a ret­ro­spec­tive study on di­a­betes be­tween 2019-2023, which re­vealed that adults lost 1776 limbs to am­pu­ta­tion.

“That is a scary amount, but do you know what is more scary about it? Over 91 per cent had com­pli­ca­tions of di­a­betes, and 18 per cent were smok­ers. That tells you the ben­e­fits of stop­ping smok­ing and con­trol­ling your di­a­betes. These are peo­ple who lost their mo­bil­i­ty, and their qual­i­ty of life will suf­fer,” he said.

The study found that the av­er­age age for low­er limb am­pu­ta­tion was 63 years, with men ac­count­ing for 61 per cent. There was no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween In­do and Afro-Trinida­di­ans. A third of this group were be­tween 41-60 years old, and 68 per cent start­ed as walk-in pa­tients af­ter home reme­dies failed.