Hospital nightmare

Western Bureau:

As the after effects of Hurricane Melissa continues to take a heavy toll on the lives of residents in western Jamaica, nurses at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay, St James, are complaining of hellish conditions on the job, saying they are force to co-exist with dead bodies as they seek to keep other patients alive.

According to one nurse, who did not want to be identified, there are dead bodies on the floor where she and her colleagues carry out their duties. They have found the conditions even more difficult to deal with amid the trauma they were already suffering from the horrific hurricane which has disrupted life in almost every sector in western Jamaica.

“We have had dead patients laying on the floor while we are coding or resuscitating another patient next to them,” the nurse wrote in a note which was seen by The Gleaner.

“Just yesterday I care for a child on the nurses’ desk, because there was no available bed to care for a three-year-old whose home collapsed on him during the storm, who has only [just] made it to the hospital. All this while a dead man was laying at our feet, waiting to be wrapped and shipped to the morgue,” the nurse wrote.

According to the nurse, the general working conditions are now so bad that running water is a scare commodity, which makes functioning in a normal way all but impossible.

“There is hardly ever any running water for the past eight days,” she wrote. “Nurses have had to pee in cups and empty [them] in the toilet to avoid squatting or stooping over toilets filled with urine or faeces.”

Efforts to get a comment from Dr Delroy Fray, the clinical coordinator for the Western Regional Health Authority, and other senior health officials from the region, were unsuccessful, primarily due to limited telephone connectivity across the region. However, medical professional and lecturer at The University of the West Indies, Dr Christopher Ogunsalu, told The Gleaner two days ago that under the prevailing conditions, there is a great likelihood of the spreading of serious communicable diseases.

RESURGENCE OF DISEASES

“We are likely to see a resurgence of the COVID-19, cholera, malaria and water-borne diseases,” said Ogunsalu. “People will need to take serious precautions, as some of these diseases could cause death.”

Regarding the general condition at the CRH, there has been a major breakdown in communication, especially regarding notifying the next of kin of persons who have died at the hospital.

The family of Wendy Grinnion, a resident of Flanker who died at the hospital on the night Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, only became aware of her death three days later when they visited the hospital to bring her fresh clothes and other personal items.

“Because there was no telephone connectivity, they were not able to inform us, so we can’t blame the hospital,” a relative told The Gleaner. “However, we are not pleased that they have not done the paperwork to release her body so we can take it to a funeral home of our choice. It is going almost two weeks, and the situation is becoming quite a bother.”

The hurricane has added to the challenging conditions that were already being faced by people seeking healthcare at CRH, which is currently undergoing a multibillion-dollar refurbishing exercise, which was sparked by a noxious fumes issue that surfaced in late 2017. Many persons are forced to spend days on chairs or on the floor on the Accident and Emergency Department due to issues related to bed space.

adrian.frater@gleanerjm.com