Another refurbished health facility – the second in five days – has been reopened in rural Barbados in Government’s bid to ease some of the pressure off the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
A state-of-the-art St Andrew Outpatient Clinic, in Belleplaine, officially opened its doors yesterday, with Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley saying such facilities in rural Barbados were critical to the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which have been on the rise before much of the focus was diverted to battle COVID-19.
It comes after Monday’s reopening of the St Joseph Outpatient Clinic in Horse Hill.
“The major reason why we started this transitional community care programme is because we saw, in my first year of doing Estimates with the Ministry of Health for 2019, a considerable spike that was consistent in the level of expenditure for dialysis in this country,” Mottley said during yesterday’s opening ceremony.
She added the transition to community-based health care was designed to be preventative, referencing the perennial struggle with bed space at the QEH due to NCDs. (CLM)
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