UNFPA donates mobile clinic to Ministry of Health

The Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) has do­nat­ed a ful­ly equipped mo­bile health clin­ic to the Min­istry of Health as part of ef­forts to im­prove ac­cess to health­care in un­der­served and hard-to-reach com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The do­na­tion was an­nounced on Wednes­day and forms part of a part­ner­ship in­volv­ing UNF­PA, the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da through Glob­al Af­fairs Cana­da, the Min­istry of Health and the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FPATT).

The clin­ic will be op­er­at­ed by FPATT un­der the over­sight of the Min­istry of Health.

It is in­tend­ed to bring sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health ser­vices, pri­ma­ry health­care screen­ing, di­ag­nos­tic ser­vices and emer­gency care di­rect­ly to com­mu­ni­ties where ge­o­graph­i­cal bar­ri­ers may make ac­cess to health­care fa­cil­i­ties more dif­fi­cult.

The cli­mate-con­trolled mo­bile unit has two clin­i­cal screen­ing and ex­am­i­na­tion spaces, an ex­am­i­na­tion bed, di­ag­nos­tic kits, med­ical re­frig­er­a­tion and ex­am­i­na­tion lights, as well as oth­er med­ical equip­ment.

It is al­so equipped to re­spond to emer­gen­cies, with oxy­gen, suc­tion equip­ment, re­sus­ci­ta­tion bags, a spinal board, stretch­er and head im­mo­bilis­er.

Ac­cord­ing to UNF­PA, the mo­bil­i­ty of the clin­ic will al­low FPATT to con­duct com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, fa­cil­i­tate ear­ly screen­ing and pro­vide health ed­u­ca­tion while re­fer­ring pa­tients to pri­ma­ry health­care fa­cil­i­ties and the wider pub­lic health sys­tem when ad­di­tion­al care is re­quired.

The ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand FPATT’s ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide health­care ser­vices in com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and com­ple­ment ex­ist­ing pri­ma­ry health­care ser­vices.

UNF­PA said the do­na­tion re­flects its con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing na­tion­al part­ners and ad­vanc­ing sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly among vul­ner­a­ble and un­der­served pop­u­la­tions.

FPATT has worked with na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners on sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights in Trinidad and To­ba­go for sev­er­al years.

The part­ners said the mo­bile clin­ic rep­re­sents a step to­wards more eq­ui­table ac­cess to health­care and a more peo­ple-cen­tred ap­proach to ser­vice de­liv­ery.