The Greater Ari­ma Cham­ber of Com­merce has wel­comed the open­ing of the new Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, de­scrib­ing it as a long-await­ed step for­ward for health­care de­liv­ery in east Trinidad.

The de­part­ment of­fi­cial­ly be­gan op­er­a­tions on Fri­day, five years af­ter the fa­cil­i­ty was orig­i­nal­ly built for that pur­pose. The move re­lo­cat­ed emer­gency ser­vices from the Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In a state­ment, the Cham­ber thanked Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Bhadase See­ta­hal-Maraj, se­nior ex­ec­u­tives, health­care pro­fes­sion­als and oth­ers in­volved in bring­ing the fa­cil­i­ty in­to op­er­a­tion.