Op­po­si­tion Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecher­an in­sists that the coun­try's health in­fra­struc­ture has col­lapsed.

Seecha­ran makes the claim in light of T&T reg­is­ter­ing its high­est 24-hour COVID deaths with 32 yes­ter­day.

He is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

"With 32 Covid-19 deaths to­day, our na­tion faces the grim re­al­i­ty that PM Row­ley has be­come de­sen­si­tized to the col­lapse of the na­tion’s health in­fra­struc­ture un­der Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh. I re­peat the call of my po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar S.C. to have Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh re­moved from the Min­istry of Health forth­with and be re­placed with a com­pe­tent in­di­vid­ual.

In to­day’s Ex­press a ju­nior doc­tor brave­ly asked the Min­istry of Health to ease the strain cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. This young doc­tor ex­pressed feel­ings of phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and men­tal ex­haus­tion and spoke of a doc­tor to pa­tient ra­tio in ex­cess of 1:60. This sit­u­a­tion has to be ad­dressed by the Min­is­ter, as it speaks to the lev­el of care, a crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tient would re­ceive in our na­tion’s pre­mier hos­pi­tal.

The Min­is­ter of Health has stat­ed that half a bil­lion tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars have been spent on hir­ing ad­di­tion­al hu­man re­sources, up­grad­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and procur­ing con­sum­ables. But we have all seen the chaot­ic im­ages of rain flood­ed pa­tient tents and now we have con­fir­ma­tion of a lack of oxy­gen tanks with pa­tients be­ing com­pro­mised, while wait­ing for tanks to be re­filled.

Ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er re­port, our young doc­tors are un­der-equipped to per­form their du­ties, as they have to share two oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion mon­i­tors among 60 pa­tients. How does the Min­is­ter ex­plain an­oth­er young doc­tor re­port­ing a lack of PPE and hav­ing to work on Covid-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients with­out gloves?

The ques­tion has to be asked, “Where has all the mon­ey gone?” Dur­ing the Mid-Year Re­view, I made a clar­i­on call for the Min­is­ter of Health to hire spe­cial­ist physi­cians to as­sist in the man­age­ment of crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients. These would in­clude In­ter­nal Med­ical Spe­cial­ists, Pul­monary Physi­cians, Car­di­ol­o­gists, En­docri­nol­o­gists, etc. The man­age­ment of pa­tients crit­i­cal­ly ill with Covid-19 is very com­plex.

Lit­tle is known of the cir­cum­stances, causative and as­so­ci­at­ed fac­tors re­lat­ed to the deaths in our hos­pi­tals. As they say, “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” PM Row­ley must re­place the Min­is­ter of Health now, to give re­lief to our health­care work­force and to save the lives of our cit­i­zens."