Finally, Tobago gets its hospital

Prime Minister Kamla Persad–Bissessar and the Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), Orville London, jointly unveiled a plague Wednesday to commission the first phase of the new Scarborough General Hospital at Signal Hill.

The hospital, which has been under construction for several, will open in phases.

The first phase will offer diagnostic and outpatient services. Other services to be offered in the first phase are pharmacy and mortuary, building maintenance systems, environmental, plumbing/electrical, mechanical, security, bio-medical engineering, ICT, cafeteria, medical records, phlebotomy, emergency, courier to support medical records, laboratory and supplies and instruments for sterilisation.

Services to the public begin next week.

When the hospital is fully opened it will offer outpatient clinic services, including general practice medicine, paediatrics and developmental paediatrics, obstetrics and gyanecology, general surgery, urology, internal medicine, nephrology, haematology, dermatology and rheumatology.

It would also provide blood-testing with results delivered in under 30 minutes; radiology, including non-contrast CT scans; ultrasound, fluoroscopy, mammography and bone density scans.

In a speech to mark the event Persad–Bissessar called on the THA and other stakeholders to make sure that they open the other phases of the hospital in the shortest possible time.

It took nearly a decade for the hospital to reach the point where it could offer services to citizens. And the PM said she would not allow the situation to happen again.

The sod for the institution was turned during the Panday UNC administration but construction did not begin until 2003 with a projected cost of $130 million. Due to a controversy involving the original contractor, NH International, the projected was stopped for about two years. When it resumed the government handed the contract to China Railways.

The Manning PNM administration had promised to deliver the hospital in 2010 at a cost of more than $700 million. But that never happened, leaving the project in the hands of the new People's Partnership administration led by Persad-Bissessasr.

She described the 100-bed hospital as an example of a true partnership. "I must say that this project is truly a team effort. It has shown that the partnership is a vital factor of making dreams into a reality," she said.