Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, has con­firmed that while no Cuban nurs­es are em­ployed by the au­thor­i­ty, two Cuban doc­tors are cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing ser­vices.

Dr Gopeesingh was re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the UNC’s head­quar­ters yes­ter­day.

Last year, there was re­gion­al at­ten­tion on the Cuban Med­ical Co­op­er­a­tion Pro­gramme, fol­low­ing a diplo­mat­ic stand-off be­tween the Unit­ed States and Cari­com, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The fall­out sur­round­ed a pol­i­cy shift by the US gov­ern­ment, led by Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, which tar­get­ed what Wash­ing­ton has de­scribed as “forced labour” prac­tices with­in Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions. The pol­i­cy placed Caribbean gov­ern­ments un­der pres­sure to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly nurs­es.

Gopeesingh stressed that the NCRHA’s cur­rent arrange­ments do not in­clude Cuban nurs­es.

In­stead, the NCRHA chair­man turned his crit­i­cism to­ward the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, blam­ing it for the col­lapse of a lo­cal nurs­ing train­ing ini­tia­tive.

Gopeesingh said the nurs­ing school in Tacarigua, which had been train­ing nurs­es in spe­cialised sub-dis­ci­plines, de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, as large num­bers of nurs­es opt­ed to mi­grate over­seas.

“That has gone astray; it is no longer be­ing done, so we need sub-spe­cial­i­ty nurs­es in car­di­ol­o­gy, neu­ro­surgery, ac­ci­dent and emer­gency, so all the spe­cial­i­ty nurs­es that we need are no longer avail­able.”

He added that re­build­ing do­mes­tic nurs­ing ca­pac­i­ty re­mains crit­i­cal, not­ing that re­liance on for­eign labour can­not be a long-term so­lu­tion.

He said he was con­fi­dent that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ac­tive­ly ex­am­in­ing op­tions to restart and strength­en the spe­cialised nurs­ing train­ing pro­gramme.