Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing ahead with plans to op­er­a­tionalise the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, and may con­sid­er the re­cruit­ment of for­eign nurs­es if need­ed.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bo­doe said the fa­cil­i­ty had been ful­ly equipped when it was first opened by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2015 and had a struc­tured plan for com­mis­sion­ing. 

He said this process in­volves open­ing ser­vices grad­u­al­ly over sev­er­al months, in­clud­ing re­lo­cat­ing staff and re­cruit­ing new per­son­nel.

Bo­doe said the orig­i­nal plan for com­mis­sion­ing is still avail­able and rel­e­vant, and the Health Min­istry is work­ing with the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) to iden­ti­fy doc­tors who have ap­plied for po­si­tions.

“I have asked each of the RHAs to pro­vide a list­ing of how many doc­tors have ap­plied for po­si­tions,” Bo­doe said.

He added that both ju­nior and se­nior doc­tors will be hired.

“I be­lieve there will be no is­sue when it comes to doc­tors,” he said.

On Tues­day, the pres­i­dent of the TT Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art said there was no need to open the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. Stu­art said there were two oth­er chil­dren’s health fa­cil­i­ties, and the one in Cou­va may be un­der­utilised. He al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the lack of pae­di­atric nurs­es and med­ical staff for the fa­cil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Bo­doe not­ed that while ad­di­tion­al nurs­es will be re­quired to staff the hos­pi­tal, all op­tions are be­ing ex­plored, in­clud­ing the re­cruit­ment of for­eign nurs­es through ex­ist­ing in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments if the lo­cal pool can­not sup­ply the re­quired num­bers.

“We are go­ing to do what­ev­er is re­quired to re­cruit the ad­di­tion­al nurs­es,” he said, adding that dis­cus­sions will be held with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion re­gard­ing nurse train­ing pro­grammes.

Bo­doe said Gov­ern­ment could not al­low the 230-bed fa­cil­i­ty at Cou­va, which in­cludes an MRI unit and CT scan­ner, to re­main idle.

“Even if it’s go­ing to be used in the short term to pro­vide re­lief on the back­log... we start like that, we con­tin­ue,” he said.

How­ev­er, Stu­art, when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, said no for­eign nurse will want to come to T&T to work for what he de­scribed as sub­stan­dard wages. He lament­ed that if for­eign­ers were hired, their salaries would be high­er than lo­cal­ly trained nurs­es.

“There’s no for­eign nurs­es to bring in. The for­eign nurs­es, there’s no for­eign nurse with the ex­cep­tion of Cu­ba , will­ing to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go to work for less than they can work for any­where else in the world. So that’s a non-starter.”

He said nurs­es from In­dia, Nige­ria, and the Philip­pines have stopped com­ing.

Stu­art was still scep­ti­cal about op­er­a­tional­is­ing the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

“It is cur­rent­ly be­ing used by UWI to train nurs­es and oth­er cat­e­gories of staff.”

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern about redi­rect­ing re­sources.

“Any­thing more than that would re­quire ex­ten­sive re­sources be­ing redi­rect­ed from more crit­i­cal ar­eas to this less im­por­tant area at this time.”

He added: “I don’t en­vi­sion that Cou­va Hos­pi­tal com­ing or treat­ing ful­ly, and I want to re­it­er­ate it’s ful­ly, be­cause it’s al­ready op­er­a­tional, un­til the next three, four, five years.”