Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is ex­am­in­ing a cat­a­stro­phe fund to as­sist chil­dren who have to seek med­ical at­ten­tion over­seas, Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at the Gov­ern­ment's week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence, Narace said that mat­ter was be­ing ex­am­ined by Cab­i­net re­cent­ly. Narace al­so im­plored the par­ents of Ba­by Faith to take the child to Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal at 8.30 am to­day for a planned surgery on her af­fect­ed hand.

This is to be done by Drs Ram­roop and Au­drey Ram­cha­ran, he said.

Deny­ing that hos­pi­tal au­thor­i­ties had lost Faith's file, Narace said the par­ents did not bring in the child to Mt Hope on Wednes­day for a planned surgery on her hand.

On an­oth­er is­sue, Narace said his min­istry was con­tin­u­ing au­dits in­to any al­le­ga­tions of un­fair hir­ing prac­tices at RHAs. He said he'd not­ed that Op­po­si­tion claims about "eth­nic cleans­ing" had boiled down to "silent cleans­ing" and "po­lit­i­cal cleans­ing." He said in one of the al­leged cas­es of "cleans­ing" it had turned out that the per­son at is­sue had tak­en a VSEP pack­age. "Once peo­ple write me, I re­spond to all let­ters and in­ves­ti­gate," Narace said.