Deyalsingh: 250 health care specialists for TT from Cuba

A team from the Health Ministry will be going to Cuba later this month to recruit 250 health care specialists in 11 different fields.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, during a news conference yesterday at the ministry’s head office, Park Street, Port of Spain, said specialists critically needed at the nation’s health institutions could not be sourced locally.

“Either the skill does not reside locally or people do not want to work in the public sector under the terms and conditions. We are making every effort to recruit local medical professionals, but the positions cannot be filled,” he said.

Deyalsingh said specialists were needed in paediatrics, cardiology, gastroenterology, haemotology, nephrology, internal medicine, orthopaedic surgery, paediatric cardiology, maxillofacial surgery, opthalmology and A and E (Accident and Emergency).

There was only one maxillofacial surgeon in the country who was from Cuba, and one paediatric cardiologist who only returned to Trinidad from a scholarship last month.

“These are the specialists we have been trying to recruit for the past 12 months. I am sending a plea that we need certain specialities.”

The minister sent a message to all doctors who were qualified in any of these fields and were unemployed and willing to work in the public sector to apply for the positions and if they qualified, they would be hired “tomorrow. “We need you, the country needs you.”

He said the issue of employment of doctors have become a political issue which he was not going to respond politically. He was responding to Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh’s criticism about Deyalsingh asking interns to send him their resumes.

“The main problem with the provision of medical services in the public health sector is the lack of specialists, not interns or house officers because specialists do not generally stay in the public sector. That is why we have no choice over the past ten to 15 years but to go to Cuba to get specialists, even primary care doctors who do not want to work in rural areas.

“We had to engage the United Nations to get UN doctors to come to Trinidad to go out into the rural settings. That is why we have to employ foreigners, because our locals either don’t have the skill set or don’t take advantage of the opportunity to work in the public sector,” he said.

The recruits would be given three-year contracts with an option to apply for a fourth year.

Regarding house officers, Deyalsingh said it was not because interns were not available locally, but because they wanted to work in the “cathedral of medicine.”

“They want to work in Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Port of Spain General Hospital, San Fernando General Hospital, but they do not want to work in the rural communities. They specified where they want to work and what department and we cannot fulfill evry wish and every demand because we have a certain number of positions.