Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said yesterday he is giving regional health authorities a month to get their act together.
Deyalsingh, who delivered the feature address at the Palliative Care Society’s fifth Annual Conference at the Trinidad Hilton and Conference Centre yesterday, described the treatment of patients at public hospitals across the country as callous.
“I plan to be unpopular,” he said.
The minister commented on the circumstances of the death of Henry Chang at the accident and emergency department at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex earlier this month. Chang died while waiting to be given a bed at the hospital. He complained that too often patients are “put in a corner after triage and nobody takes responsibility to find a bed for these people.”
“It is not a bed problem, it has to do with the kind of system that is callous and indifferent to human suffering,” he said.
Delaysingh said the system at most local hospitals was not geared to relieving patients of their suffering. He said there was a recent situation where one regional health authority had 2,000 vials of morphine while another that needed the drug had none.
The minister also accused regional health authorities of palming off their cancer patients on the St James Infirmary.
“They send everyone St James. Out of sight, out of mind. I gave them one month to accept their share of mental health and cancer care. It is callous that someone in Sangre Grande has to go there and Tobago has to go St James,” he said.
Deyalsingh said 40 per cent of the ministry’s budget will be spent on oncology and much needed new equipment.
Saty Seemungal, chairman of the Palliative Care Society, said with the support of the Ministry of Health and the North Central Regional Health Authority, the organisation established a 12-bed palliative care unit at the Caura Hospital. He said the society planned on establishing similar units at every hospital in T&T.