An­na-Lisa Paul

The T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) says one of the rea­sons a high per­cent­age of the nurs­ing per­son­nel in T&T re­mains un­vac­ci­nat­ed is mi­gra­tion.

This is ac­cord­ing to TTR­NA Pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“From our stand­point, the main feed­back is that nurs­ing per­son­nel like to trav­el and they are look­ing to see which vac­cines are ac­cept­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, de­spite the as­sur­ance from the WHO that all vac­cines are safe and ef­fec­tive.”

Stu­art said the quar­an­tine con­di­tions be­ing im­posed by coun­tries vary ac­cord­ing to which vac­cines have been ad­min­is­tered and was now in­flu­enc­ing the be­hav­iour of many of these nurs­es as some of them are in the process of mi­grat­ing to the US and the UK in search of im­proved em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He said some of the re­cruit­ment agen­cies were now telling these nurs­es that they can be­come vac­ci­nat­ed when they ar­rive in the re­spec­tive coun­try.

“They would have a greater choice in terms of the type of vac­cine they want to re­ceive and so, some of them have cho­sen to wait,” Stu­art said.

He stressed it was not a sim­ple mat­ter of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy on their part, but be­cause of pro­fes­sion­al bet­ter­ment.

How­ev­er, Stu­art ad­mit­ted that there were oth­er nurs­es who “sim­ply do not care any­more be­cause they want the Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on some of the long-stand­ing is­sues plagu­ing the health sys­tem.”

This he said that in­clud­ed pol­i­cy leg­is­la­tion and as a re­sult, “They feel vac­ci­na­tion is low down on the scale.”

Mean­while, he said there were some who were hes­i­tant to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of the un­knowns as­so­ci­at­ed with it.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of them are telling us they have re­viewed the lit­er­a­ture and they are look­ing for a par­tic­u­lar vac­cine and if this means go­ing abroad to get the vac­cines of their choice, they have no prob­lem in do­ing that,” he stat­ed.

Asked if pres­sure is brought to bear on nurs­ing per­son­nel to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed as part of the na­tion­wide ef­fort to get more of the pub­lic to take the vac­cine, Stu­art said, “It would be fool­hardy for the Gov­ern­ment to try and pres­sure work­ers.”

“In­flu­enc­ing and en­cour­ag­ing them is one thing and we have been work­ing as an As­so­ci­a­tion to get our mem­bers to take the vac­cine, but if it comes to mak­ing it manda­to­ry, we will have a dif­fi­cul­ty with that…not on­ly health sec­tor work­ers, but all unions will have a prob­lem with that.”

The TTR­NA head said health sec­tor work­ers are more vac­ci­nat­ed than most mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion due to the job they per­form - and while the dai­ly num­bers of these pro­fes­sion­als ac­cess­ing the vac­cine may be low­er than of­fi­cials would like.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of nurs­ing per­son­nel would be­come vac­ci­nat­ed even­tu­al­ly but try­ing to man­date it above and be­yond any oth­er sec­tor…we would have a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty with that.”

Stu­art said the ma­jor game-chang­er would be if it be­came manda­to­ry for the en­tire coun­try to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed.

Health of­fi­cials last week ex­pressed con­cern that that many health­care work­ers re­mained un­vac­ci­nat­ed at this time.

Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said a mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve is be­ing planned for health­care work­ers and should be rolled out by the end of this week across all five re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that 90 per cent of doc­tors and physi­cians are vac­ci­nat­ed but for nurs­es, it is be­tween 40 to 50 per cent.

Deyals­ingh has spo­ken with Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga to dis­cuss an ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paign for the hes­i­tant and un­in­formed, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.