More free med­ical clin­ics and out­reach cen­tres should be set up in the South­west­ern penin­su­la to fa­cil­i­tate the high de­mand for pe­di­atric, den­tal care, op­tom­e­try, phys­i­cal ther­a­py and der­ma­tol­ogy says Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh.

He was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Tues­day's de­par­ture of the Unit­ed States Navy Ship. The ship docked in La Brea and of­fered free surg­eries and med­ical care to cit­i­zens be­tween Sep­tem­ber 5-10.

Teelucks­ingh said the de­mand for med­ical care in the penin­su­la from the USNS was over­whelm­ing. He not­ed that 1,700 ap­pli­ca­tions for surg­eries were made to the USNS but on­ly 100 surg­eries were per­formed.

"This high de­mand for health care ser­vices of­fered by the USNS is in­dica­tive of the trou­ble we face when ac­cess­ing med­ical care," Teelucks­ingh said. He added that five peo­ple from Ce­dros who suf­fered heart at­tacks, died last year while on their way to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

"There is no prop­er am­bu­lance ser­vice and the Ce­dros Health Cen­tre clos­es at 4 pm and does not open on week­ends so if some­one falls ill, we have to wait for an am­bu­lance to come from Siparia. By that time the pa­tient can die," Teelucks­ingh added.

He al­so added, "There is no den­tal clin­ic in Ce­dros, no eye care clin­ic and in Point Fortin, there is a lot of over­crowd­ing in the old Point Fortin hos­pi­tal. Some of the Xrays and ECG ma­chines are not work­ing and if you need any CT Scans or blood work you have to go to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal," he said.

Teelucks­ingh said he has been call­ing on in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to come to Ce­dros to of­fer health care which has been over­bur­dened with the fre­quent in­flux of Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

He not­ed that 20 per cent of those ac­cess­ing health care at the USNS were Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

"In Ce­dros, we saw be­tween 350 to 400 pa­tients but hun­dreds more showed up to ac­cess ba­sic med­ical care at the out­reach med­ical clin­ics set up at the Ce­dros Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and the Point Fortin In­door Are­na in Egypt Vil­lage," he added.

Teelucks­ingh said peo­ple were lined up out­side the venues from 1 am as they tried to ac­cess free den­tal, op­tom­e­try, ther­a­py, pe­di­atric and gen­er­al wound care ser­vices.

"On a dai­ly ba­sis, there was a steady mix of both lo­cals and Venezue­lans. In Point Fortin, the lines stretched from the cen­tre to the road.

Ail­ing for­eign­ers were giv­en care and in some cas­es, our lo­cals were left out. This de­mand for health care com­ing from the penin­su­la shows that we need bet­ter health care ser­vices in Ce­dros, Ica­cos and Point Fortin," Teelucks­ingh said.

Teelucks­ingh ex­tend­ed grat­i­tude to the Unit­ed States Em­bassy for as­sist­ing the peo­ple in the penin­su­la say­ing his lob­by­ing through in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia had raised aware­ness glob­al­ly about the health cri­sis in the Ce­dros re­gion.

Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Dr Al­bert Per­saud was un­avail­able for com­ment and did not an­swer his cel­lu­lar phone.

How­ev­er, checks by the Guardian re­vealed that the cen­tre on­ly of­fers a lim­it­ed range of ser­vices which in­clude chron­ic dis­ease, an­te­na­tal care, child health and school health.