Commissioners shocked by Scarborough Hospital

Tobago needs a new hospital immediately, declared Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the Health Sector, Gladys Gafoor yesterday. “Atrocious!” That is how she summed it up after a tour of the island’s only major health institution by members of the commission yesterday. “The conditions are atrocious, and it is difficult to understand how patients can be allowed to be relieved of their difficulties and so on in an institution like this, as it is,” she asserted. “And even the members of staff, how they can operate under these trying circumstances and difficulties!” Gafoor lamented: “There is absolutely no air conditioning, and the weather will not permit them to be treating patients, especially delivering of babies — new babies. The Labour Room has no air conditioning, is not properly furnished, and people have to be delivering their children there! It is unacceptable, in my view,” the Health Sector Commission of Inquiry chairman stressed.

Gafoor, accompanied by other members of the commission, got a first-hand look at the conditions at the Scarborough Hospital — from the termite infested outpatient clinic to the lack of privacy at the X-ray and Casualty Department, the dilapidated state of the Geriatric Ward, the Operating Theatre, and the small, dilapidated “ancient” stove at the Male Surgical Ward which upset the commissioners visibly, among other areas in need of urgent upgrade in terms of equipment as well as physical infrastructure. She pinpointed the Geriatric Ward as one of the areas with which the commissioners were most dissatisfied. She expres-sed amazement that the Geriatric Ward was “completely devoid of basic furnishings — ordinary chairs, ordinary equipment which people are entitled to are not there, the beds are not made, the laundry is not taken care of.

This is where our elderly patients are actually housed, and I think it’s deplorable — the floors are in a terrible condition. Everywhere in the hospital there are cracks that people could slip. It’s termite infested, and there is a lack of basic furnishings.” Overall, she noted that “no laundry is available in some of the wards, the patients are huddled together with beds that are just about less than two to three feet apart. There is a total lack of privacy in most of the wards, in my view,” she asserted. Gafoor added, “I marvel at the staff that have to work under these circumstances. They are dedicated staff, and their chief of staff Dr Maria Dillon-Remy (hospital medical director) is working also under very trying circumstances.

“I admire the fact, I commend her for being able to carry on the institution and still deliver good health care to the public health sector under these circumstances. “They have to speed up with the construction of the new hospital. Scar-borough needs a new hospital as soon as possible, as soon as is practicable!” Gafoor told Newsday. Meanwhile, she highlighted a situation where the nurses complained that they were “very terrified” when a police officer came onto the ward with “a very long gun (rifle)” to guard a patient who is a suspect in a murder. “He (policeman) appeared to be quite insolent when requested not to come in under those circumstances. They (nurses) told me that he said ‘different strokes for different folks.’ I don’t understand that because the nurses are the ones caring for these patients and they are entitled to be treated with dignity,” Gafoor stressed.