Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal has ac­ti­vat­ed its Emer­gency Mode for the next 48 hours, fol­low­ing a sud­den rise in pa­tient ad­mis­sions and lim­it­ed bed space in its med­ical and sur­gi­cal wards.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment yes­ter­day, the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) said the hos­pi­tal is now at full ca­pac­i­ty and can no longer ac­com­mo­date new pa­tients in some de­part­ments.

“All elec­tive surg­eries have been sus­pend­ed un­til fur­ther no­tice,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Cur­rent­ly, both the med­ical and sur­gi­cal wards are filled. Ac­cord­ing to the TRHA, “Adult med­ical and sur­gi­cal wards [have] 33 and 34 pa­tients re­spec­tive­ly, with 13 pa­tients await­ing ad­mis­sion at the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency (A&E) De­part­ment.”

The TRHA is now ask­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to avoid vis­it­ing the hos­pi­tal’s A&E un­less their con­di­tion is life-threat­en­ing.

“The pub­lic is strong­ly ad­vised to vis­it A&E on­ly in cas­es of dire emer­gency dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” it said.

As part of its emer­gency re­sponse, the health au­thor­i­ty said it is work­ing to move sta­ble pa­tients to an­oth­er pub­lic fa­cil­i­ty.

“Every ef­fort is be­ing made to trans­fer sta­ble pa­tients to the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, where lim­it­ed bed space re­mains avail­able.”

The TRHA thanked To­bag­o­ni­ans for their pa­tience dur­ing the strain on the health sys­tem.

“We thank the pub­lic for their co­op­er­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing as we pri­ori­tise crit­i­cal care and man­age this tem­po­rary but ur­gent sit­u­a­tion.”

The TRHA did not in­di­cate if the Emer­gency Mode may be ex­tend­ed be­yond the ini­tial 48 hours.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith Breb­nor, in a What­sApp state­ment on the sit­u­a­tion last night, clar­i­fied, “We are hav­ing an in­creased num­ber of peo­ple get­ting sick (with their reg­u­lar ill­ness­es), and pre­sent­ing at the hos­pi­tal.”