CAMILLE MCEACH­NIE

Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Dr Agatha Car­ring­ton is re­buk­ing any­one who crit­i­cizes the Blue Room- a men’s health and well­ness clin­ic fo­cus­ing ex­clu­sive­ly on men’s health at no cost to them.

Ser­vices are avail­able at the clin­ic from 7 am - 7 pm, every day ex­clu­sive of Sun­day.

The fa­cil­i­ty is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Na­tion­al Union for Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­a­tive Work­ers (NUGFW), BMEN or­ga­ni­za­tion and the Di­vi­sion, lo­cat­ed at the for­mer Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal build­ing, at Fort King George.

As she for­mal­ly opened the cen­tre on No­vem­ber 19, she chid­ed crit­ics who said it pro­vid­ed ser­vices al­ready of­fered in To­ba­go’s health sec­tor.

“We know that there have been com­men­ta­tors push­ing back,” she said, warn­ing, “As of to­day, we will push back the push-backs.”

Adding: “What the blue room is not; it’s not a du­pli­cate of any ser­vices pro­vid­ed on this is­land or this coun­try,” she said to a rous­ing round of ap­plause from the au­di­ence.

In un­der­scor­ing the need for the men’s fa­cil­i­ty, she said the ser­vices pro­vid­ed at To­ba­go’s oth­er health fa­cil­i­ties are “lim­it­ed.”

“At Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, we pro­vide di­ag­no­sis, treat­ment, and care. At our pri­ma­ry health cen­tres, we pro­vide lim­it­ed health pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, hence the sit­u­a­tion (con­cern­ing) the health of our men,” Car­ring­ton said.

She said the fa­cil­i­ty pro­vid­ed treat­ment for strokes, prostate can­cers, re­nal dis­eases as well as men’s so­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal needs and “in­ti­mate space for men to talk.”

Mean­while, Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles who al­so spoke at the cer­e­mo­ny called on men to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their health and place with­in the so­ci­ety.

He said, “suc­cess­ful mar­riages and re­la­tion­ships...are fa­cil­i­tat­ed by a shar­ing of roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­tween man and woman.”

Speak­ing on the val­ue of the clin­ic, he said: “It’s our hope that the ser­vices ... de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for men and boys in a ded­i­cat­ed space... will prove to be an en­cour­age­ment for us to seek health care.”

With­in re­cent times, the Sec­re­tary of Health has come un­der fire for the added ser­vices she is in­tro­duc­ing to the is­land’s health sec­tor.

An on­line pe­ti­tion, call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the Chief Sec­re­tary to re­move her from her po­si­tion, has gar­nered over 3,000 sig­na­tures.

The pe­ti­tion al­leged that she was “us­ing pub­lic funds un­wise­ly to fund projects which are al­ready in ex­is­tence.”