International aid coming to help with pandemic

Ghanaian and Cuban nurses, as well as a medical team from North America, are heading to Barbados to assist in the fight against COVID-19.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley disclosed this during a virtual press conference from New York on Saturday.

Mottley said she was “very grateful” to have her request for additional nurses from Ghana processed.  “We have now to work on the details of exactly how many, and to recognise exactly where we will deploy them.

“I’m happy at the same time to report that some of the Cuban nurses left; 48 of them; we got another 20 nurses … to replace them.  The deficit that is there is being taken up by … the Barbados Defence Force and others in the swabbing areas, and therefore, we are still in a position to appropriately manage output with respect to the nurses,” she stated.

The Prime Minister also mentioned her meeting with the Northwell Health Group, which owns North Shore University Hospital in Long Island, an institution which was responsible for training many of the leading surgeons and consultants in Barbados.

“…The relationship between our country and that particular hospital was very strong at one time in the past.  It is for over a decade or so, it was allowed to drop, and the truth is that we are in a position where we want to re engage in a very deliberate way,” she said.

Mottley spoke about her visit to the group’s emergency stand-alone centre, which she described as “extremely impressive”, and disclosed that Northwell Health was in discussions with the University of the West Indies on matters pertaining to medical education and medicine.

She also disclosed that the institution had “agreed to dispatch a team to Barbados, next Wednesday – four doctors and four nurses – to help us also with the review of our framework as we manage the surge in COVID”.