Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has re­quest­ed a re­port from the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) CEO Dr Bri­an Ar­mour on the two non-func­tion­al CT scan­ners at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In re­sponse to a query from Guardian Me­dia, the au­thor­i­ty con­firmed a tem­po­rary in­ter­rup­tion in CT scan­ning ser­vices at the hos­pi­tal, as both ma­chines were non-func­tion­al.

The SWRHA said that the “rare oc­ca­sion” of both ma­chines be­com­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­op­er­a­ble prompt­ed the im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to min­imise dis­rup­tions to pa­tient care.

As part of their im­me­di­ate con­tin­gency plan, it ex­plained that pa­tients re­quir­ing ur­gent CT imag­ing were be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal and pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties with­in the dis­trict.

“This ap­proach en­sures con­tin­ued ac­cess to es­sen­tial di­ag­nos­tic ser­vices,” the SWRHA said.

It al­so ad­vised that full restora­tion and func­tion­al­i­ty to the main ma­chine were on sched­ule yes­ter­day, while re­pairs to the sec­ond ma­chine were ear­marked to be com­plet­ed by June 13.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe re­it­er­at­ed the mea­sures out­lined by the SWRHA, adding that he had re­quest­ed a for­mal re­port from the SWRHA CEO, in­clud­ing mea­sures re­quired to pre­vent dis­rup­tions of ser­vice in the fu­ture.