Arima General Hospital A&E begins operations after five-year wait

Shas­tri Boodan

The Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun op­er­a­tions at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, five years af­ter the fa­cil­i­ty was orig­i­nal­ly con­struct­ed for that pur­pose.

The move, which took place on Fri­day, marked the re­lo­ca­tion of emer­gency ser­vices from the Ari­ma Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty to the new­ly op­er­a­tional de­part­ment at the hos­pi­tal.

In a re­lease, the NCRHA said the tran­si­tion was com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful­ly and emer­gency ser­vices are now ful­ly func­tion­al at the new lo­ca­tion.

Chair­man of the NCRHA Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Bhadase See­ta­hal-Maraj and mem­bers of the Au­thor­i­ty’s Se­nior Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment Team were present through­out the day, meet­ing with staff, pa­tients and rel­a­tives while ob­serv­ing op­er­a­tions as ser­vices com­menced.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the lead­er­ship team praised staff mem­bers for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, pre­pared­ness and ded­i­ca­tion in en­sur­ing a smooth tran­si­tion and un­in­ter­rupt­ed care for res­i­dents of Ari­ma and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

The NCRHA said the de­part­ment had been des­ig­nat­ed for Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency ser­vices when it was com­plet­ed more than five years ago, but had re­mained un­used un­til now. With the open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty, the Au­thor­i­ty said pa­tients will ben­e­fit from safer and more ef­fi­cient emer­gency care, im­proved com­fort and en­hanced ser­vice de­liv­ery.

The re­lo­ca­tion al­so places emer­gency ser­vices in clos­er prox­im­i­ty to sev­er­al crit­i­cal hos­pi­tal sup­port units, in­clud­ing CT and MRI imag­ing ser­vices, X-ray fa­cil­i­ties, lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices, in­ten­sive care units, op­er­at­ing the­atres and out­pa­tient clin­ics. Of­fi­cials said this would strength­en co­or­di­nat­ed emer­gency care and im­prove the over­all pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence.

The NCRHA al­so thanked mem­bers of the pub­lic for their pa­tience and co­op­er­a­tion dur­ing the tran­si­tion process, say­ing the Au­thor­i­ty re­mains com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing and ex­pand­ing health­care de­liv­ery through­out the re­gion.