Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go’s pub­lic health sys­tem is un­der pres­sure as the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal reach­es full ca­pac­i­ty, prompt­ing emer­gency mea­sures and plans for ur­gent ex­pan­sion.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary for Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Dr Faith B Yis­rael Breb­nor, con­firmed that the hos­pi­tal was forced in­to emer­gency mode on Tues­day due to a lack of avail­able beds. She spoke on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, out­lin­ing the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (TRHA) re­sponse to the ris­ing de­mand for health­care ser­vices.

“There are of­fi­cial­ly about 130 beds, but the ac­tu­al num­ber may be less,” she said, not­ing that the cur­rent fa­cil­i­ty at Sig­nal Hill has been in use for over a decade since the re­lo­ca­tion from the old Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal.

Breb­nor said the TRHA is work­ing on im­me­di­ate, short-, medi­um-, and long-term plans to in­crease bed ca­pac­i­ty.

“We are crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ing what we can do right now to ex­pand the num­ber of beds on the is­land, be­cause there are pa­tients who ur­gent­ly need them,” she said. “The TRHA has been tasked with de­vel­op­ing a plan to ad­dress this.”

She added that the sit­u­a­tion re­flects broad­er pub­lic health chal­lenges, with many pa­tients ar­riv­ing in more se­ri­ous con­di­tion and re­quir­ing longer hos­pi­tal stays. This has slowed pa­tient turnover, fur­ther strain­ing lim­it­ed re­sources.

How­ev­er, Breb­nor dis­missed pub­lic spec­u­la­tion that the emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tion was re­lat­ed to a virus or dis­ease out­break.

In ad­di­tion to ex­pand­ing bed space, staffing im­prove­ments are al­so un­der­way.

“We have sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased our in­take of doc­tors, nurs­es, and sup­port staff,” she said. “De­spite pre­vi­ous short­ages, the TRHA is cur­rent­ly per­form­ing bet­ter than many oth­er re­gions in terms of staff-to-pa­tient ra­tios.”

She not­ed that more nurs­es will be hired in the com­ing weeks to help ease the bur­den on the health sys­tem.

Look­ing ahead, Breb­nor high­light­ed the need to build a sys­tem ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion growth.

“To­ba­go needs to grow be­yond our cur­rent pop­u­la­tion of around 60,000,” she said. “We aim to reach at least 100,000 res­i­dents and vis­i­tors, and we need a health­care sys­tem ro­bust enough to car­ry that load.”

Breb­nor al­so urged the pub­lic to use health cen­tres for non-emer­gency care to help re­duce con­ges­tion at the hos­pi­tal’s Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment.