The Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ting to ad­dress crit­i­cal short­ages with­in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, with a fo­cus on in­creas­ing nurs­ing per­son­nel and im­prov­ing pro­fes­sion­al out­comes. Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lakram Bo­doe an­nounced on Fri­day that ef­forts are un­der­way to fill 1,868 nurs­ing va­can­cies across the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) in Trinidad.

Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) School of Nurs­ing grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, held at the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty in Preysal, Dr Bo­doe out­lined the staffing gaps: 625 at the North West RHA (NWRHA), 143 at the North Cen­tral RHA (NCRHA), 719 at the South West RHA (SWRHA), and 381 at the East­ern RHA (ER­HA). He con­firmed that the Min­istry of Health will seek fund­ing in the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get to be­gin fill­ing these po­si­tions.

“I am pleased to an­nounce that the NWRHA has em­ployed 97 nurs­es and 59 ENAs, it is al­ready hap­pen­ing. At one of the RHAs, 69 nurs­es have al­ready as­sumed du­ties,” Dr Bo­doe said.