sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

The board of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) will meet to­day to dis­cuss a call by 11 doc­tors for the re­in­state­ment of and an apol­o­gy to four se­nior doc­tors who were re­cent­ly trans­ferred from the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty.

The board’s meet­ing this morn­ing will ex­am­ine a call made by the 11 se­nior med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, who’ve in­sist­ed the board im­me­di­ate­ly do a probe in­to why the four se­nior spe­cial­ist doc­tors were re­moved from the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal re­cent­ly.

“We look for­ward to your ur­gent ac­tion and to any di­a­logue which may be de­sir­able and hope we can look for­ward to the cor­rec­tion of what ap­pears to be a very se­ri­ous de­fault,” the 11 prac­ti­tion­ers stat­ed in their let­ter to the board on Tues­day.

The sig­na­tures af­fixed were from:

Dr Fa­reed Ali (act­ing head of Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Ser­vices),

Dr Naz­im Boris Mo­hammed (act­ing Head of Med­i­cine),

Dr Bar­bara Ram­per­sad (Head, Pe­di­atric Surgery/Neu­ro­surgery),

Dr Mar­lon Seenath (Head, Gen­er­al Surgery),

Dr Rheana Sie­u­nar­ine (Head, Anes­the­sia and In­ten­sive Care),

Dr Rob­bie Ram­per­sad (act­ing Head, Ra­di­ol­o­gy),

Pro­fes­sor AVC Rao (Head Di­ag­nos­tic Lab­o­ra­to­ry Ser­vices),

Dr Camille Greene (HOD Pae­di­atric Med­i­cine),

Dr Cur­tis Young (HOD, Spe­cial­i­ty surgery),

Dr Sushil De­varashet­ty (Head, PICU),

Dr Par­manand Ma­haraj (For­mer head, Ra­di­ol­o­gy/Con­sul­tant ra­di­ol­o­gist).

The 11 called out the board on the is­sue of for­mer Cou­va Chief of Staff Dr Don Mar­tin, who was among four se­nior spe­cial­ists at that COVID cri­sis cen­tre, who were trans­ferred by the NCRHA last week. Shift­ed along with Mar­tin were Drs K Ker­na­han, A Mac­cum and S Mo­hammed.

In a press re­lease on the is­sue, NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas had said it was a ro­ta­tion on the doc­tors’ re­quest af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with NCRHA Di­rec­tor of Health Dr Malachy Ojuro. How­ev­er, Mar­tin sub­se­quent­ly de­nied this was re­quest­ed, stat­ing it was crit­i­cal the ex­ist­ing team re­mained in place.

The let­ter sent by the 11 prac­ti­tion­ers to the NCRHA board stat­ed that “sig­nif­i­cant and dis­con­cert­ing dis­cor­dance still per­sists be­tween the two nar­ra­tives.”

They said they reached out to the board since the mat­ter was of sin­gu­lar im­por­tance, in­volv­ing the most ex­pe­ri­enced physi­cians in T&T in the care of COVID-19 pa­tients at a time when their ser­vices are most des­per­ate­ly need­ed. They not­ed the Health Min­istry’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of the cur­rent worst COVID wave and that T&T’s un­der a State of Emer­gency.

“We find it con­cern­ing in the ex­treme the NCRHA has de­cid­ed to re­move these physi­cians at this time,” they stat­ed.

“Why were these doc­tors re­moved? Were their pref­er­ences tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion?

“The wider ap­pear­ance, in­clud­ing the in­con­sis­tent and con­fus­ing ex­pla­na­tions prof­fered by the Re­gions, sug­gest that these physi­cians were re­moved with­out clear jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, against their will and with no thoughts as to the ad­verse im­pact on the wider pub­lic. The NCRHA and Dr Mar­tin’s points are clear­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry.”

They not­ed the re­moval at­tract­ed wide ad­verse pub­lic com­ment, in­clud­ing from a cur­rent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion.

Giv­en the im­pact of the de­ci­sion on the NCRHA and T&T, the doc­tors felt it would be reck­less not to pur­sue an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of why and how the ac­tion was con­duct­ed.

“We owe it to the physi­cians, who are noth­ing short of na­tion­al he­roes and we owe it to every cit­i­zen,” they said.

They point­ed out that desta­bil­is­ing the de­liv­ery of health care to COVID pa­tients has the po­ten­tial to af­fect all pa­tients and was of di­rect rel­e­vance and ex­treme im­por­tance.

In view of the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to the pub­lic, they said they were al­so con­cerned about the treat­ment of their col­leagues, “… And the pos­si­bil­i­ty of defin­ing a new sta­tus quo: is this how we our­selves can ex­pect to be treat­ed by the Re­gion in the fu­ture?”

In light of all of this, the 11, who Guardian Me­dia was told are at­tached to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, said they were in­sist­ing:

1. That the board take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to con­duct an in­de­pen­dent and trans­par­ent in­quiry in­to why the physi­cians were re­moved and why the ac­tion was con­duct­ed in such a cu­ri­ous and un­de­sir­able man­ner. If wrong­do­ing is iden­ti­fied, a clear ac­count­ing de­liv­ered to the in­di­vid­u­als re­spon­si­ble.

2. An apol­o­gy to the physi­cians who were re­moved and an of­fer for im­me­di­ate re­in­state­ment so as to re­duce any ad­verse im­pact up­on pa­tient care.

3. Clear feed­back from the Re­gion as to how it in­tends to en­gage with med­ical staff mov­ing for­ward with re­as­sur­ance that this sort of episode will not be re­peat­ed.

Their let­ter added, “As med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, we con­tin­ue to act in what we con­sid­er the best in­ter­est of pro­vid­ing pub­lic health care at a fraught and dif­fi­cult time in our na­tion.

“We write this let­ter to the mem­bers of the board in the be­lief that they, as fidu­cia­ries of the Re­gion, share these val­ues and will be mo­ti­vat­ed to in­ves­ti­gate what ap­pears to be a se­ri­ous breach of the Re­gion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pri­ori­tise pa­tient care and se­cure wider pub­lic in­ter­est.”

The NCRHA board mem­bers are Steve de Las, Elvin Ed­wards, Ran­dolph Clouden, Yvonne Bullen-Smith, Marie Ay­oung-Chee, Stew­art Smith, Dr Maria Bartholomew, Dr Kei­th Clif­ford, Ani­ta So­han, Ki­moy Thomas and Kadeen Gra­ham.

Yes­ter­day, NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas said since the board had re­ceived the let­ter, it would en­gage them and it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for him to com­ment.

Board mem­ber Ed­wards, mean­while, in­di­cat­ed that the board meets to­day and the let­ter would be dis­cussed. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh did not re­ply to calls or mes­sages yes­ter­day.