HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh has blasted St Augustine MP Khadijah Ameen for what he termed as her unfair criticisms of the public health sector during a media interview she did on the weekend.

Ameen was reported as saying, "We need hospitals where people won't have to sleep on the floor in emergency for days, and waiting lists for surgery into the next two years."

But speaking to reporters at the Mt Hope Women's Hospital on Christmas Day, Deyalsingh countered by saying Ameen's criticisms were unfair and could lead to low staff morale in the public health sector. He spoke after meeting and greeting women who gave birth on Christmas Day. He also visited the Port of Spain General Hospital during the day.

Presenting chocolates to Mt Hope nurses in a symbolic gesture of thanks to all nurses in TT, he lauded that they had been the ones of implement Government policy that had seen steady drops in maternal mortality, with zero deaths in childbirth this year.

He said, "I want to credit them with the work they have done.

"In saying that, I also want to wish Khadijah Ameen a softness of heart, because I read in the papers this morning her Christmas greeting which was that we have patients sleeping on the floors of our hospitals. That is a patent lie.

"And I don't know why we take health as a bobolee to be beaten up. It demoralises the staff when people say things like that," Deyalsingh said.

Asked about maternal mortality figures for this year, Deyalsingh said, "None so far for 2023, which is a record. But nobody will write about that. Nobody will scream about that. Nobody will break down my door to interview me on that." He said this was all down to the yeomen service given by the nursing staff.

"That's why when people make comments in the public domain, because they see health as a convenient bobolee, it upsets me.

Because then I have to come in to the staff and talk to them and counsel them because they are unfairly targeted like (what) Khadijah Ameen did. On Christmas Day, of all days, you would choose to do that? Christmas Day?

"You can't recognise and put aside the politics for one day of the year? You say patients are sleeping on hospital floors?" He said that in 2022, there had been two maternal deaths, both being covid-related.

[caption id="attachment_1052150" align="alignnone" width="774"] LOVE YOU BABE: Latoya Hernandez kisses her newborn boy who was born on Christmas Day at the Mt Hope Women's Hospital on Monday. Photo by Roger Jacob[/caption]

BREAST FED IS BEST FED

Otherwise, he said that post-covid, his ministry has re-enacted its breast feeding policy for new mothers. "The rate of early initiation of breast feeding then (2020) was ten per cent. Now it is 95 per cent.

"So when we are asked what are we doing about NCDs (non-communicable diseases) that is the first step. To get mothers to breast feed their children, their babies, as young as possible."

Saying nurses initiate mothers to breast feed, he vowed to always defend them against unfair criticism. He called a senior nu