More than 1,200 surgeries have been performed at the Couva Children’s Hospital since phased operations began in late 2025.
Health Minister Dr. Lackram Bodoe says the facility is helping to reduce surgical backlogs across the country’s Regional Health Authorities, while expanding access to specialised paediatric services.
The Couva Children’s Hospital is playing an integral role in the expansion of public healthcare in Trinidad and Tobago.
According to Minister of Health Dr. Lackram Bodoe, the hospital has been used to reduce the extensive waiting list of patients awaiting surgery.
“So we’ve been able to provide as we speak 1,238 surgeries and we’ve taken these patients from the waiting lists across the four RHAs. So we’ve used it in that manner. So all of the RHAs were asked to provide the waiting lists and they’ve sent their doctors to the Couva Hospital to treat their own patients so that has worked very well for us and we’ve been able to reduce the waiting list to a manageable level.”
The Minister noted the hospital is providing specialised outpatient clinics for children with a range of medical conditions, while the outpatient pharmacy has served more than 1,500 people.
“So for example endocrinology rheumatology child development neurology nephrology premature neonatal and cardiology. So we have the specialists coming there to Couva treating these these children and the numbers I have in front of me suggested 1,358 children have so far benefited in the short time that the hospital has been reopened.”
Minister Bodoe said the government intends to continue expanding the services available at the Hospital and will be announced over the coming months.
“One of the intentions the Prime Minister would have announced when she built and opened the Couva Children’s Hospital in 2015 August 14th, I remember they did very clearly because I was there, was that we would use that facility to try and generate some foreign some foreign exchange. Ten years later that that need is still there and therefore we are looking at some sort of arrangement eventually where that facility will be able to generate some foreign exchange for us as well.”
He says the longer-term plan is to develop the facility’s specialised services while making use of the additional hospital capacity available through other national health care facilities.