Se­nior doc­tors have al­leged­ly been is­sued a “gag or­der” by the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) board to pre­vent them from go­ing pub­lic with their com­plaints, amid the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing its CEO Davlin Thomas. This is the claim from for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the is­sue, sus­pend Thomas and fire the NCRHA board.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day on the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy which arose af­ter four se­nior doc­tors were ro­tat­ed out of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal sys­tem, Gopeesingh said, “Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a to­tal of 17 se­nior doc­tors at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and EWM­SC, who met with the NCRHA Board on Thurs­day, were or­dered to keep their mouths shut and say noth­ing about the dan­ger­ous mis­man­age­ment and prob­lems that can en­dan­ger the lives of in­no­cent pa­tients.”

He al­so said Thomas’ “claims about a de­crease in mor­tal­i­ty rates at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is noth­ing short of a bla­tant, ob­scene ma­nip­u­la­tion of sta­tis­tics in a des­per­ate at­tempt to save face. The Min­istry of Health’s dai­ly COVID-19 fig­ures tell an­oth­er sto­ry of these high­ly ques­tion­able deaths.”

“An analy­sis of the sta­tis­tics shows that giv­en the record- high num­bers of COVID-19 cas­es which now threat­en to over­whelm the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, the var­i­ous Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties have be­gun keep­ing their very ill pa­tients in need of life-sav­ing ven­ti­la­to­ry sup­port at the hos­pi­tals un­der their own purview. There­fore, pa­tients are now be­ing sent to the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal (SWRHA), Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal (ER­HA) and the NWRHA med­ical tents in Port-of-Spain, in­stead of Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, as be­fore.”

Deem­ing the CEO’s state­ments “very li­bel­lous,” Gopeesingh said they cast “se­ri­ous as­per­sions” on the doc­tors’ med­ical com­pe­tence, which “will have the ef­fect of caus­ing fur­ther dis­trust and de­mo­ti­vat­ing all med­ical work­ers. It will al­so se­ri­ous­ly desta­bilise and jeop­ar­dise the par­al­lel health care sys­tem and the pub­lic's trust in it, at this cru­cial time when cit­i­zens are dy­ing at an alarm­ing rate.”

He said the NCRHA board should im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign or be dis­missed forth­with by the Cab­i­net, since “no friends, rel­a­tives or lim­ing part­ners of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate must be al­lowed to en­dan­ger our pub­lic health care sys­tem to the point of its ut­ter col­lapse.”