Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly work­ing to ex­pand ex­tend­ed open­ing hours at health cen­tres across the coun­try. He said the move would cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for un­em­ployed doc­tors.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s launch of the U Health and Well­ness Ex­po at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, Bo­doe said the ini­tia­tive, which was first in­tro­duced dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, was aimed at im­prov­ing pub­lic ac­cess to pri­ma­ry health­care ser­vices. He said it is be­ing con­sid­ered for wider im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“The re­sults of that showed that it was ben­e­fi­cial to the pop­u­la­tion, and at this cur­rent time, I be­lieve that on­ly six of those health cen­tres re­main open. So, we want to roll it back out on a phased ba­sis,” he said.

He said the move would ease pres­sure on the emer­gency de­part­ments of ma­jor hos­pi­tals and en­sure more time­ly treat­ment for non-emer­gency cas­es. Bo­doe said it would al­so cre­ate em­ploy­ment for un­em­ployed health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

“It pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage the un­em­ployed doc­tors. You will re­call there are sev­er­al doc­tors who are un­em­ployed at the mo­ment, so this will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty as well to get those doc­tors in­volved.”

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the Min­istry of Health, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, is de­vel­op­ing a new pro­gramme to in­tro­duce pub­lic health ed­u­ca­tion in­to the school cur­ricu­lum.

“A big prob­lem in this coun­try is child­hood obe­si­ty and we be­lieve that part of the so­lu­tion will be ed­u­ca­tion.”

How­ev­er, Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal chal­lenges in the health sec­tor. With the mid-year bud­get re­view ap­proach­ing, Bo­doe re­it­er­at­ed grow­ing con­cerns over the $400 mil­lion debt owed to sup­pli­ers of med­ical goods and ser­vices.