To look through the positive spin put on the escalating ill-health situation in Trinidad and Tobago by its Minister Terrence Deyalsingh is to see as alarming the statistics released last week indicating one million patient interactions taking place at Trinidad’s four major hospitals last year. To really appreciate this large number of visits to hospitals is to keep in mind the population of Trinidad and Tobago is around 1.4 million persons.
Perhaps such positive thinking and the direction being taken by Deyalsingh’s government team is the way to go in dealing with what are systemic health problems among the population in our homeland. Not that we who are living here in the GTA are not without similar health issues and its complications, particularly with diabetes, hypertension, and cardio-vascular disease, as are nationals back home in Trinidad and Tobago.
Even as Deyalsingh noted the million visits, at the same time he indicated this figure was restricted only to the northern health region of Trinidad; it did not include the 120 or so health centres in central and south. So, this million visit figure is larger, and could mean the problem occupies an endemic space.
Once again, Deyalsingh complained why nationals are frequent hospital visitors, and in growing numbers: “Since I have come into office, I have been saying that a lot of this has been driven by diabetes, hypertension and so on, and I keep telling people they have to take care of themselves.”
Even as Deyalsingh lamented, he added the positive spin needed as an approach to dealing with this troubling situation, saying it had catalysed the good work now being done in interception and education within communities – what is the Non-communicable Diseases national programme.
Said Deyalsingh: “We have not started to see a marked reduction in the number of people coming in yet, but what we’re doing, we have started going out into the community and treating the people there and we will get results from this. By going out into the community, if you treat them and get them in large numbers early, then you don’t have to hospitalise them for two weeks and a month later on... It’s much cheaper to treat you in the community than it is to take you in and occupy a hospital bed.” For the past two years, the government of Trinidad and Tobago has allocated a whopping (TT) $6 billion-plus to its health sector.
As we know only too well here in the GTA, and as Deyalsingh is pointing out to Trinidad and Tobago nationals, good health, like charity, begins in the home.
Said Deyalsingh: “People have to work with the healthcare system. We would do our part in providing the goods and services, but they also have a part to play in taking care of their own health, so they don’t present themselves to a hospital with a crisis, and that is the mantra we are using with the NCD plan.”
One remarkable discovery by doctors working in the NCD programme is the discovery some of its attendees are unaware of being critically ill. According to one doctor working in the communities being visited, some of its attendees are unaware they are walking time bombs. Many of them are suffering with diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer, without being aware of this, and consequently are going without treatment, and its concomitant changes in lifestyle.
Such an intervention into communities by the Trinidad and Tobago government, and its cadre of doctors, is certainly contributing to the positive spin required to manage, among other things, anxiety over these growing and systemic incidences of serious ill-health, widening budgetary expenditure, and at the same time making significant interventions into a population that is growing exponentially unhealthy.
We should listen to, and follow, such a mantra for better health here in the GTA.