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Trinidad and To­ba­go’s on­go­ing blood short­age cri­sis has once again ex­posed crit­i­cal gaps in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem.

Alexan­dra Kong, a 25-year-old fourth-year med­ical stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), died Wednes­day, just days af­ter her fam­i­ly is­sued a des­per­ate ap­peal for blood. Her death has in­ten­si­fied pub­lic scruti­ny of the avail­abil­i­ty of life­sav­ing blood sup­plies and broad­er sys­temic is­sues in health­care.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe con­firmed that the Min­istry of Health is pur­su­ing strate­gies to in­crease vol­un­tary, non-re­mu­ner­at­ed blood do­na­tions na­tion­wide. He said pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns will be ex­pand­ed to en­cour­age reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions and par­tic­i­pa­tion in hos­pi­tal and com­mu­ni­ty blood dri­ves.