Rahael: 24-hour health care coming

HEALTH MINISTER John Rahael said all district health facilities in Trinidad and Tobago will soon be opened 24 hours per day, seven days a week, and equipped with accident/emergency and surgical facilities to reduce the current pressures on TT’s general hospitals. In making the announcement at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, Rahael also said Diego Martin would get a $26 million district health facility and St James will get a similar facility. “The idea behind these health centres being open 24 hours is that it will ease the burden on accident and emergency at our general hospitals, because at these district health facilities there will be a wide range of services including minor surgical and x-ray services. Persons will be able to access health care at these district health facilities.

In Princes Town, the district health facility is open 24 hours and in other parts of Trinidad, we propose to extend the opening hours of our district health facilities that are located within the communities, so that should something happen to someone and they require a level of service, they will be required to get it at these district health facilities,” Rahael said. The minister said doctors and all the necessary support staff will be on call at these facilities 24 hours a day and this was an essential component of the Inter-American Development Bank funded Health Sector Reform Programme, 60 percent of which has been completed to date. Speaking about the Chronic Disease Assistance Programme (CDAP) and the need to promote healthy lifestyles, Rahael said many diseases such as end stage renal failure were brought about “because of our own neglect.”

The cost of treating these illnesses was very expensive and citizens needed to work hand-in-hand with Government to improve the level of health care in TT. Recalling that mammography machines were installed at the Port-of-Spain and San Fernando General Hospitals, Rahael said the Sangre Grande General and other hospitals will soon be receiving mammography machines. Advising women to get check-ups at the slightest hint of breast cancer, Rahael said the ministry hoped to shortly begin the screening of women over the age of 40 years. “Thank you very much Dr Rahael,” Prime Minister Patrick Manning quipped, evoking laugther from the assembled journalists.

Speaking about his recent medical treatment in Cuba, the Prime Minister said it was not an indictment of the local health sector, because as a developing country, TT did not have a wide level of health services but Government was making “an orderly progression of the improvement of the level of health services in the country.” Manning reiterated that health was second only to education in terms of Government’s priorities. Asked about the Commission of Inquiry into TT’s public health services, the Prime Minister said he had not been updated on that matter but hinted that it could start within the next month.