– Minister The provision of good quality health care within the confines of the prison system is an undertaking that is stigmatised by some medical practitioners.? This deduction was made by Minister of Health Dr. Bheri Ramsaran as he addressed a recent forum at Cara Lodge which was aimed at emphasising the need for addressing this situation within the local prisons system.Minister of Health Dr. Bheri RamsaranHe spoke of the need to have nurses cater to the needs of prisoners within the infirmary even as he highlighted the importance of preparing nurses to ensure that they feel comfortable in such settings.The Minister, in alluding to some of the concerns of nurses in this regard, stated that there is the belief that this undertaking requires nurses with military training.“I have heard some of the nurses in our formal Ministry of Health setting claiming that nurses for the prison system need to be special. I don’t necessarily share this view because the nurses in the past have gone to battlefields; they have gone to all adverse conditions where the need was for service and compassion.”“If we need it for this vulnerable group in the prisons,Cheap Jerseys, a regular nurse can provide it, provided that some of the commitments taken such as the protection of our female nurses in the infirmary are enforced,Cheap China Jerseys,” the Minister said.Moreover, he asserted that specially trained nurses in a military fashion could in fact take away from the compassionate nature of the profession.He further sought to liken the stigma associated with delivery of health care in the prison system to the days when stigma and discrimination of HIV/AIDS was rampant. So great was the stigma then, he noted, that “some practitioners and nurses were reluctant to deal with infected persons. We have overcome those days and now HIV/AIDS patients are openly embraced by the nursing and other health professionals. This is what we need to aim for in the care of this other vulnerable group…the prison population”.With this in place, he said that nurses operating within the prisons’ infirmaries would be in a better position to identify early the need for ailing inmates to be provided with medical care from a specialised institution rather than that offered at the level of the infirmary. This, according to him, could see some prisoners being taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation for medical attention and “this again would redound to the benefit of the prison system and the prison authorities, because the earlier care could be given, it would help to remove adverse criticism to how prisoners would have been treated,” the Minister added.He made reference to the fact that the media houses tend to highlight treatment to prisoners that could have been done better, even as he noted that it was thought that it would be beneficial having nurses there, who would be able as professionals to identify that a prisoner was not for example being a truant in falsifying a condition. This, he said,NFL Jerseys Wholesale, would indicate to the prison authorities that “yes indeed this prisoner needed superior management and even if necessary, accompany a group of prisoners to the hospital, because the understanding was that the prison officers many times do this, but at the same time,Cheap Jerseys, ensure the assistance of qualified personnel to massage the process through the health sector and help to cut on time that prisoners are out of a secured environment.”The proposed improved level of health care for prison inmates comes as part of a strategic move by the Health Ministry,Cheap NFL Jerseys China, which will be done in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs through the Prison Services. This move, according to the Ministry of Health Parliamentary Secretary,Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale, Joseph Hamilton, could see nurses and even some doctors visiting the prison’s infirmary to closely attend to inmates. He explained that servicing the prison population in the infirmary will be undertaken under the necessary security prescription.According to him “some nurses were not trained to understand that that is part of their remit, so we have to go back to refining the thought process of Florence Nightingale, that intervention was not only about the fancy white uniform; it was among the lepers, soldiers and people with all kinds of conditions…”This move is premised on recent activities developed by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) in the context of health and human rights in prisons as well as to identify the next steps to be taken in order to develop joint activities/programmes engaging all relevant ministr