Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says all is not per­fect in the health sec­tor and while staff short­ages and staff burnout have ham­pered COVID-19 man­age­ment, the Gov­ern­ment had hired 1,776 peo­ple to work in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem.

He was speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health press brief­ing on Sat­ur­day in re­sponse to a re­port from the com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate COVID-19 man­age­ment in T&T, head­ed by Prof Ter­rence Seemu­n­gal, which spoke of staff short­ages and ex­haus­tion by staffers in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem.

 Deyals­ingh said dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, there is no pa­tient/nurse ra­tio. He said there was no blue­print to man­ag­ing COVID but said he was grate­ful for the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the com­mit­tee which out­lined short­com­ings.

He al­so said it was im­pos­si­ble to give one-on-one care at the In­ten­sive Care Unit but doc­tors still did elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing and would run to a pa­tient if an emer­gency arose. 

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art said the 1,776 staff hired by the Min­istry of Health com­prised main­ly ju­nior em­ploy­ees who had no pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence and this was an im­ped­i­ment to suc­cess­ful COVID man­age­ment.

Stu­art said, "This was a down­fall for us. We did not have the lux­u­ry of hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple work­ing with crit­i­cal pa­tients and High De­pen­dence per­sons. When the min­is­ter said he hired, he hired ju­nior staff and this was some­thing that the COVID In­ves­ti­gat­ing Com­mit­tee, Min­istry of Health and RHAs have over­looked.

"Should we have placed ju­niors to treat with the most dead­ly virus that has af­fect­ed the world? No, We should have used more ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple."

Speak­ing in re­sponse to the re­port sub­mit­ted by the five-mem­ber in­de­pen­dent team which in­ves­ti­gat­ed clin­i­cal out­comes of COVID-19 pa­tients in the pub­lic health sec­tor, the for­mer med­ical di­rec­tor of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon said Deyals­ingh could have hired ex­pe­ri­enced re­tirees like him­self.

 Cha­toor­goon, who has man­aged over 900 COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients at their homes since the start of the pan­dem­ic, said, "Pan­dem­ic or no pan­dem­ic there must be a nurse to pa­tient ra­tio if you hope to achieve ef­fec­tive and mean­ing­ful health care. This is hu­man life we are deal­ing with.

Dr Anand Chatoorgoon

"Deyals­ingh could have hired more re­tirees like my­self whom he spite­ful­ly chose to ig­nore."

Cha­toor­goon al­so de­scribed the com­mit­tee's re­port as "over­all a shame­ful and dis­grace­ful in­dict­ment of the ap­palling and atro­cious state of the pub­lic health sec­tor in T&T."

He said pa­tients were forced to en­dure hor­ri­ble con­di­tions.

"Methyl­pred­nisolone and dex­am­etha­sone are im­por­tant drugs for COVID and were in short sup­ply as doc­tors were ask­ing rel­a­tives to source these drugs for pa­tients. Rel­a­tives have been call­ing me ask­ing me to help them to find these drugs," Dr Cha­toor­goon said.

"It is my view that COVID pa­tients would do bet­ter to be treat­ed at home rather than in these pub­lic health care fa­cil­i­ties. The five-mem­ber team did not have enough time to un­earth all the hor­rors and ter­rors that pa­tients had to en­dure and the way to find this out would be to con­duct a more ex­ten­sive sur­vey and in­ter­view of pa­tients who were treat­ed in this par­al­lel health­care sys­tem."

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Phar­ma­cy Board An­drew Ra­haman said there has been sig­nif­i­cant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals short­ages dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, not­ing that the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the COVID-19 com­mit­tee were war­rant­ed.

He agreed that the min­istry's Drug Stor­age build­ing C-40 be opened sev­en days a week.

"We are over­sup­plied by phar­ma­cists in Trinidad so there is no is­sue of staff short­ages as to why C-40 isn't open 24 hours all week," Ra­haman said.

"Phar­ma­cists should be on call so that they could sup­ply med­ica­tion when in need."

Ra­haman al­so said ship­ping prob­lems and a short­fall in the man­u­fac­ture of drugs in Chi­na al­so con­tribute to the short­ages of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.