FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says that every per­son suf­fer­ing from a chron­ic dis­ease must have a week’s sup­ply of med­ica­tion at their home dur­ing the hur­ri­cane sea­son.

Re­spond­ing to the lengthy time it took pa­tients to re­ceive med­ical help fol­low­ing last year’s floods caused by Trop­i­cal Storm Bret and the Di­vali rains, Deyals­ingh said it was an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised pro­to­col that chron­ic ill­ness pa­tients fol­low.

He was speak­ing on the pub­lic health sec­tor’s readi­ness to re­spond to pos­si­ble dis­as­ter dur­ing an in­ter-GoKEVON­vern­men­tal agency me­dia con­fer­ence on the State’s readi­ness for the 2018 hur­ri­cane sea­son.

There were sev­er­al com­plaints from res­i­dents in the Pe­nal, Debe and Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ties last year as flood wa­ters left hun­dreds ma­rooned for days. For the el­der­ly and ill, it took up to a week be­fore first re­spon­ders could reach to their homes or they could leave their homes for treat­ment at a health fa­cil­i­ty.

“The mes­sage is that every in­di­vid­ual with a chron­ic dis­ease such as di­a­betes or hy­per­ten­sion should make it their per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to have a sup­ply of med­ica­tion for at least a week… un­til the re­spon­ders can come and un­til you can get to a health­care fa­cil­i­ty,” Deyals­ingh said.

He said just like peo­ple are ad­vised to keep im­por­tant doc­u­ments in a plas­tic bag dur­ing a storm,  food, wa­ter and med­ica­tion should be in stock.

But in emer­gency med­ical cas­es dur­ing or in the af­ter­math of the hur­ri­cane or storm, Deyals­ingh said it was his hope that first re­spon­ders with dinghies would bring pa­tients to a des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tion where an am­bu­lance could take them to a health­care fa­cil­i­ty as soon as pos­si­ble.

He said the min­istry would have to re­ly on oth­er agen­cies to get the peo­ple out of their homes and bring them to high­er ground.

Dinghies were not avail­able dur­ing last year’s flood, how­ev­er, OPDM head Neville Wint said the De­fence Force and Fire Ser­vice are in pos­ses­sion of dinghies to reach those trapped in their homes.

He said the use of the dinghies would be spread across the is­lands based on the im­pact of a flood. Wint said that the safe­ty of the first re­spon­ders will be as­sessed be­fore de­ploy­ment so there would be times when the re­sponse is de­layed, based on the re­sources and con­di­tions.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Roshan Paras­ram said that a chief tech­ni­cal dis­as­ter co­or­di­na­tor was re­cruit­ed by the Min­istry last year and has re­vamped the dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness plan for the pub­lic health sec­tor.

This en­sures that all fa­cil­i­ties are up and run­ning dur­ing ad­verse weath­er events. Paras­ram re­called that in 2017, To­co vil­lagers were cut off due to fall­en trees and land­slide and lessons were learned for that in­ci­dent. He said an air am­bu­lance ser­vice is a pos­si­bil­i­ty and is be­ing looked at in Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex where there is a he­li­port.

With the San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tals still suf­fer­ing the oc­ca­sion­al over­crowd­ing, Paras­ram said that in prepa­ra­tion for a storm or hur­ri­cane, elec­tive surg­eries would be post­poned to ac­com­mo­date emer­gency cas­es.

Pro­vi­sions are al­so in place to pay over­time to staff who may be re­quired to work ex­tra hours. Gen­er­a­tors at fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing looked at while a Smart Hos­pi­tal’s ini­tia­tive, op­er­at­ed by so­lar en­er­gy, is al­so be­ing con­tem­plat­ed.

Deyals­ingh said that all ser­vices that are not crit­i­cal will be con­vert­ed to deal with emer­gen­cies.

“We think we’re in a very good place health wise to re­spond to any nat­ur­al event,” the min­is­ter said.