I wish to ex­press my deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and cowork­ers of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dur­al clerk as­sis­tant Sher­anne Samuel on her un­time­ly pass­ing.

As vice chair­man of the PAAC in the last Par­lia­ment I had the plea­sure of work­ing with Sher­anne on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.

She was hum­ble but ef­fi­cient, qui­et but ef­fec­tive, ded­i­cat­ed and dili­gent, tru­ly a gem of a per­son. She will be missed by all who knew her.

Whilst her death was trag­ic, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­lay in mak­ing a di­ag­no­sis be­cause of non-func­tion­ing CT scan­ners at both the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Com­plex speak vol­umes of the chal­lenges that our health­care pro­fes­sion­als face in the health sec­tor.

Whilst the Min­is­ter of Health would have us be­lieve that COVID-19 is re­spon­si­ble for all the cur­rent ills in the health sec­tor, the fact is that the de­liv­ery arms of the health ser­vice, the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties have been un­able to ful­fill their man­date un­der this Gov­ern­ment be­cause of poor man­age­ment and lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Al­though symp­toms and clin­i­cal signs still com­prise the foun­da­tion of di­ag­no­sis in pa­tients with neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions, it is ac­cept­ed best prac­tice that an ear­ly CT scan bet­ter guides the med­ical team in pro­vid­ing the most ap­pro­pri­ate and time­ly treat­ment.

Hav­ing to wait 14 hours for a CT scan in the cir­cum­stances re­port­ed in the news­pa­per is in my view un­ac­cept­able. Ma­chines will break down but sys­tems must nev­er break down.

Un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, the ex­ter­nal pa­tient pro­gramme was de­vel­oped to pro­vide a con­tin­gency for such cas­es to be out­sourced in a time­ly in­ter­ven­tion in ex­act­ly such cir­cum­stances.

The ques­tion is why was this av­enue not utilised ear­li­er? The min­is­ter’s at­tempt to blame this on COVID-19 is a poor ex­cuse and an at­tempt to hide mis­man­age­ment and in­com­pe­tence.

This has to do with sys­tems that have col­lapsed un­der the watch of the PNM Gov­ern­ment de­spite at least $20 bil­lion be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the health sec­tor be­tween 2016 and 2019.

In 2020 sure­ly our cit­i­zens de­serve bet­ter.

Sani­tise, phys­i­cal dis­tance and wear your masks.

Dr Lack­ram P Bo­doe