The rate of people going into the hospital and not making it out is staggering and the sad part about this, is many who die, did not have to die. There is a general lack of attention to detail and general care in our public hospital leading to many deaths that did not have to happen.
A few ago I was at Devon House and overheard a conversation between a young doctor and her friend, where she said something to the effect, as Doctors we are not supposed to get emotionally attached to our patient and between sobs lamented the fact that ” she did not have to die, she did not have to die she could have been saved”. I will not disclose which hospital the young Dr was attached to, but clearly she was distraught by the fact the patient who died, did not have to had she received proper care but there was nothing she could have done about it at this stage.
I understand that at one of the more prominent public hospitals the healthcare system is so bad, that persons are getting adverse results from urine samples due to dirty and unsterilized ” urine container” . It is therefore advisable that when visiting our public hospital you should walk with a sterile container to collect your urine sample least you be told you have a disease that you really don’t have.
There does not appear to be this “fight” to save life at our public hospitals and while we have good Doctors and Nurses, many have long given up the fight and are simply just doing what they can do with what they have.
Our Minister of Health speaks a lot but when one look at the ramshackle he is presiding over, he ought to tell the country that we are in crises and declare a public health emergency and seek immediate help to fix the problem with healthcare.
How can one run a hospital for months without a functional autoclave?
An autoclave is a device that is used in the sterilization process, which is a critical part of the healthcare system. I heard of one case where a patient need an urgent injection and there was no needles, resulting in the healthcare provider, sterilizing a needle that had been previously used, to provide the patient with the much needed injection.
This my friend is what our healthcare system has degraded to, where Doctors and Nurses have to be fighting to get the very basic stuff to provide healthcare to those turning up at our public institutions and I am talking about one our better hospitals.
Despite all the ills of the healthcare system and the lack of funding to provide even basic stuff, we have a government that spent over $500m last year to celebrate Jamaica and plans to spend another $100m for this year celebration. I must ask the question, where are our priorities and why do we seem to be all too willing to spend scare resources where the returns are the lowest in terms of real value?
Filed under: Health |
Warren's Blog 
Also ask this question: how many Jamaicans do you see in the streets protesting the condition in the hospitals or the exorbitant expenditures on “celebrations?”
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/A-miracle_14740007
We lost a promising first former of a high school out in the East to the dreaded cancer, but did that young child have to die ?
The parents did all they could, but did the medical system in Jamaica fail the family ?
Dr Ferguson is running up and down all over the place with the smoking ban, but we have a huge health crises as it relates to child cancer and lack of proper treatment at the hospital and this needs to be addressed as a matter of great urgency.