THA health secretary: Elective surgeries to resume

THA Secretary of Health, Wellness and Social Protection Dr Faith BYisrael has announced the resumption of elective services at the Scarborough General Hospital.

This comes following the announcement by the Prime Minister on March 3 that the country is ready to begin transitioning to the endemic phase of covid19.

At Wednesday’s virtual post Executive Council media briefing, Dr BYisrael said several things are returning to a level of normalcy within the Tobago Regional Health Authority (TRHA).

“That includes a return of our outpatient services at the Scarborough General Hospital in Signal Hill. If you had those outpatient services, outpatient clinics, you’ve probably been called and told you can come back to your clinic appointments. Listen for those dates.”

She said the other thing that would resume is elective surgeries.

“These are the surgeries that we had to call off, these are the surgeries that we had to postpone for the last couple years. You are going to start getting calls from the hospital to come in and have those surgeries done, because we know that you’ve been waiting for quite a while to get those surgeries done.”

With the resumption of these elective surgeries, BYisrael appealed to the public for help.

“I need those of us on the island who are able to donate blood to please do so, because this is one of the determining factors to tell us whether we can have the surgeries or not. The thing about these elective surgeries, when you go in it may be something that is minor but if you go in and you need blood, the blood needs to physically be at the hospital to have access to immediately. It means that you need to start donating blood now.”

Discussing covid19 becoming endemic, she said it is important for people to understand that covid19 is not over.

“We are now thinking that we’ve changed from the pandemic to the endemic stage so we could relax – the reality is no, we can’t relax. We do not know what is going to happen as it relates to the level of infections for covid19 over the next couple months.”

She added, “Do not get too complacent. Do not think that we are at the end of this, do not think that covid19 is going away, we literally do not know what would happen in a month. I am encouraging everyone to continue following the guidelines that we’ve been outlining."