Hos­pi­tals are be­com­ing “home” for some—in­clud­ing chil­dren at Car­ni­val time. Some par­ents de­lib­er­ate­ly dose their chil­dren with Brook­lax lax­a­tive, take them to hos­pi­tals for “diarrhoea” treat­ment and leave them there when they want to fete for Car­ni­val, Health Min­is­ter Terrence Deyals­ingh said on Friday. …They in­duce di­ar­rhoea, go to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency unit com­plain­ing of this and you have to keep the child! There’s no law against giv­ing your child a lax­a­tive on Car­ni­val Fri­day, but be­cause this pub­lic health sys­tem is free, it’s abused,” Deyals­ingh told Par­lia­ment.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions, Deyals­ingh con­firmed that across the health sec­tor there are cur­rent­ly 51 peo­ple who are “long-stay pa­tients.” This in­cludes 18 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. There are none at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Deyals­ingh said the max­i­mum time-frame a per­son can be treat­ed at a pub­lic hos­pi­tal varies de­pend­ing on a di­ag­no­sis. But he said peo­ple “liv­ing” at hos­pi­tals are left there by their fam­i­lies, “be­cause their fam­i­lies don’t want to take care of them at home.”(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]