Faced with an increase in heart disease, head of the Cardiology Care Unit at the San Fernando General hospital, Dr Pravinde Ramoutar, is calling for a cardiac rehabilitation centre to be established in T&T.
He was speaking at a cardiology outreach programme at the San Fernando Teaching Hospital yesterday. In an interview, Ramoutar recommended that part of the Couva Children’s Hospital be used as a rehabilitation centre.
Saying heart disease is the leading cause of death in T&T, Ramoutar added: “If a rehabilitation hospital is set up, people with strokes, heart disease as well as those recovering from cardiac surgery can get assistance.”
Saying he was looking forward to setting up a centre somewhere, he said patients suffering from stroke require a lot of physiotherapy and speech therapy as well as general rehabilitation.
“We have no dedicated centre for that. We have very limited facilities,” Ramoutar added. He said the Ministry of Health should continue its know your numbers programme so more people could get tested at public health centres.
“I encourage people to get tested so you can know what your risk is. We need more public education programmes and we also need more resources to deal with complications that arise with heart disease,” Ramoutar added.
Apart from speech and physiotherapy, he said patients suffered from depression and that also needed to be treated. “We do not have enough resources to provide dialysis for people, provide transplants for kidney patients, nor do we have a specialised stroke unit,” he noted