Too general about hospital

Deyalsingh was not even prepared to disclose these details when we approached him following his live presentation in Parliament, saying only that such information would be premature. He explained further that the project is now simply at the stage of crafting a user brief and only after that is done that a cost and time line could be established.

Why such an announcement now, therefore, in too general terms about the hospital. Surely the statement is not one that could truly bring comfort to the hundreds of people who must access the hospital compound daily in not the most ideal conditions, bearing in mind that it is only a few days ago that staff, agitated by the lack of basic items in the hospital kitchen, made their displeasure known via loud banging of pots and pans and chanting.

What was also startling in the minister’s announcement in Parliament on Friday, was his revelation about the state of the wing at the hospital that the project is intended to supplant: a facility so structurally unsound that Deyalsingh, in muted urgency, quoted the globally respected Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) as concluding that the block in question has been a disaster waiting to happen in the event of an earthquake.

Deyalsingh did not say whether PAHO indicated what intensity the current block could withstand, but it borders on irresponsibility that no plan has been suggested to get all occupants – patients and health care providers and the public in general – totally out of that block and consequently harm’s way soonest, only some activity that speaks to the lessening of the load on the building.

What this means we do not know, but we do not have to remind the minister that an earthquake is not like a tropical wave which can be predicted and prepared for. This natural threat demands all kinds of long term considerations, and time and time again, we have expressed our concern about our complacency despite the warnings of the people at the Seismic Research Unit at St Augustine that we are in queue for an encounter with “the big one” any time.

All that being said, one cannot dismiss the project as not being necessary. After all, if it attains reality, it will provide a facility for 500 beds, and will offer such ancillary services as accident and emergency, an operating theatre and recovery room, intensive care unit, high dependency unit and a mortuary.

But forgive us for feeling that it sounds almost as the trumpeting surrounding the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex back in the 1970s and the length of time it took between construction and a single patient being treated at that facility.

We anxiously await some kind of time frame for the project so that we could be more hopeful that it would become a part of the country’s health services profile.

There just have been too many announcements about the hospital, from the very sophisticated suggestions from experts at the John’s Hopkins institution of the United States several years ago, to more recent pronouncements by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

It is time for us to cease being too general about the Port of Spain General Hospital.