100 UN volunteers to work in public hospitals

Within four to six weeks more foreign doctors — this time 100 UN volunteers — are due in Trinidad and Tobago to work in public hospitals, Health Minister Colm Imbert announced yesterday.

Speaking at a post-Cabinet news briefing, Imbert said  Government had agreed to accept the offer of technical assistance from the United Nations Development Programme to help the Ministry with some of its critical human resource needs. He said it would deal with the current shortage of health professionals, including health managers, which was “a serious deficiency that exists in the health sector right now”. The programme, which is titled the UN Volunteer Programme, will see a number of specialised doctors coming to work here for a monthly stipend, not exceeding what is paid to local doctors. In fact, for the very specialised it might even be less, Imbert said. The doctors, who will come from Commonwealth countries and countries approved by the WHO, will be on three year contracts. Imbert said because the UN would have oversight responsibility for these persons, government believed that they would conform to the highest standard of medical training and medical expertise.

Imbert also revealed that everything was in place to meet the one month time frame for the arrival of Cuba doctors and nurses. He said the the draft of the Agreement which is to be signed between the Governments of Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago was due to be vetted by the Attorney General yesterday. So it is quite possible that “tomorrow” the document can be executed by representatives of the governments of both countries. In fact, Imbert said it was likely that both the Cubans and the UNVs (UN volunteers) would arrive at the same time which is “in four weeks time”. He stressed that government’s efforts to fill vacancies and deal with the shortage of staff had nothing to do “putting pressure” on local doctors who are key players in the current industrial impasse. Any attempt to link the two was “shortsighted” and “superficial”. Saying that Government had no choice but to look overseas to deal with the shortage of some 200 doctors, Imbert said it was seeking to balance the countries from which the foreign doctors were coming.

On the issue of SARS and the steps being taken in the light of the close relationship between Trinidad and Tobago and Toronto, the Prime Minister announced that the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Rampersad Parasram would address the nation over the weekend “comprehensively” on the plan of action which is to be instituted. Imbert also announced that Cabinet agreed to provide the Ministry of Health with $210 million to deal with a number of shortfalls such as arrears of increment and clear the outstanding debts of the Regional Health Authorities. He said $104 will supplement the budgetary allocation of the Ministry, while $106 million will deal with outstanding liabilities in the RHAs. The North West Regional Health Authority has a debt of $77 million, while the Eastern Regional Health Authority has a $10 million debt and the South West Regional Health Authority has an $8 million debt. The money would also be used to reduce the backlog of cataract surgery and for the “long awaited” Motor Vehicle Loan Fund for the doctors.