The original article can be found in: Trinidad Newsday By MIRANDA LA ROSE
The Ministry of Health will continue running of the $750 million new Scarborough General Hospital as a unit of the ministry until it is vested via legislation in the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) and the Tobago Regional Health Authority (TRHA) according to Health Minister Fuad Khan.
The new hospital is due to accept its first in-patient on Saturday, to conduct surgeries, and operate as a full-fledged hospital, Khan told Newsday yesterday by telephone. “While awaiting the process of vesting,” Khan said, “ I will utilise the strength, service and expertise of the Ministry of Health to put in a cardiac unit, a neuro-surgical unit and an MRI (magnetic resonance imagining) unit, which I promised in the budget.”
Speaking with Newsday Khan said, the National Insurance Property Development Company Limited (NIPDEC) has handed over all outstanding hospital facilities to the ministry, in keeping with proper procedure, but until the Regional Health Authorities Act is amended to provide for the hospital to be vested in the THA and the TRHA, it will be run by the TRHA as a unit of the ministry.
“Until it is so vested, it stays as a unit of the Ministry of Health,” Khan said. “It would take time to be vested properly by legislation.”The outstanding facilities that were handed over recently, included the wards, accident and emergency department, theatre suites and the central sterilisation unit. The out-patients department and areas to house other diagnostic services and pharmacies had been handed over earlier, and had been in operation since April, when the hospital was formerly commissioned by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. The turning of the sod for the hospital was done in 2000.
The Chief Parliamentary Counsel, Khan said has the responsibility of drafting the amended legislation.
All State properties in the medical services, he said, “are vested in the Regional Health Authorities as per the RHA legislation.”
The new Scarborough General Hospital being a new facility, he said has to be vested in the TRHA and the THA. The THA will then have overall responsibility for “the running” of the hospital.
Khan is also hoping to have discussions with the TRHA and the THA to have the Scarborough hospital operate as a major teaching hospital in Tobago, which could be attached to an offshore medical school. While COSTAATT trains nurses in Tobago, Khan said that “maybe we can use the hospital as a teaching hospital for nurses as well.”
