RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Long wait­ing times for surg­eries and dead­ly hos­pi­tal-ac­quired in­fec­tions, which killed ba­bies in neona­tal units, will be a thing of the past should the UNC take of­fice, says Oropouche West can­di­date, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe.

Speak­ing at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress cam­paign meet­ing at Bhups­ingh Park in Pe­nal on Mon­day night, Bo­doe promised that un­der a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, the na­tion’s health sys­tem would be trans­formed.

“No longer will the el­der­ly go blind while wait­ing for their cataract surgery,” Bo­doe told the cheer­ing crowd. “No longer will heart pa­tients die wait­ing for their an­giograms, stents or by­pass surgery.”

He vowed that the UNC would in­tro­duce guar­an­teed max­i­mum wait­ing times for clin­ic ap­point­ments, di­ag­nos­tic tests, and sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures. “Our health­care de­liv­ery will not on­ly be pa­tient-cen­tred and pa­tient-friend­ly, but al­so time­ly,” he said.

Among the most ur­gent re­forms, Bo­doe said, will be the poor state of the na­tion's neona­tal care. Re­fer­ring to the April 2024 deaths of nine new­borns from in­fec­tions at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit, Bo­doe said the UNC would con­duct a full re­view of NICUs across the coun­try.

“You will no longer have to wor­ry that your new­born ba­by might die from an in­fec­tion be­cause there is not enough hand sani­tis­er avail­able for doc­tors and nurs­es to wash their hands,” he said. “The tragedy of 9 deaths in 7 days… ought nev­er to hap­pen again.”

In 2024, it was re­vealed that 19 ba­bies died in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the North-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA)

In an emo­tion­al ap­peal to vot­ers, Bo­doe blast­ed the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh for what he de­scribed as a decade of ne­glect. He ac­cused Deyals­ingh of aban­don­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture projects such as the car­diac catheter­i­za­tion lab at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“In 2014, a space was iden­ti­fied for a cath lab and in 2015, ten­ders were sent out. Be­tween 2015 to 2025 – no cath lab from Deyals­ingh,” Bo­doe said, adding: “But they give you a carpark in­stead.”

Bo­doe al­so promised that the UNC would make the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal ful­ly op­er­a­tional, call­ing it one of the great­est in­jus­tices of the PNM’s term that the state-of-the-art 230-bed fa­cil­i­ty re­mained un­der­utilised for years un­til the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced its ac­ti­va­tion.

He al­so said the UNC will up­date the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP) to in­clude new­er drugs for di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion, hir­ing over 500 un­em­ployed doc­tors, re­open­ing health cen­tres for ex­tend­ed hours and week­ends, and fix­ing the chron­ic short­age of med­ica­tion and med­ical sup­plies plagu­ing pub­lic hos­pi­tals.

Bo­doe al­so took aim at the out­sourc­ing of med­ical waste dis­pos­al. “In­stead of con­tract­ing out the dis­pos­al of med­ical waste to friends and fi­nanciers at a month­ly cost of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, we will re­pair and, if nec­es­sary, up­grade the in-house in­cin­er­a­tion equip­ment at the SWRHA,” he said.

In re­sponse to Bo­doe's crit­i­cism about the fail­ure to set up the cath lab, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said: "I have said 100 times that Vamed and the Aus­tri­an gov­ern­ment. It was a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment that changed the way that the project was han­dled, so we have to go out for a new ten­der un­der the OPR (Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion) law."

He added: "I have to fol­low the law".