WRHA offers counselling to families of deceased COVID-19 patients

WESTERN BUREAU:

Errol Greene, the regional director of the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), says the entity has counselling services for the relatives of persons who died from COVID-19.

The WRHA boss made the announcement in the aftermath of the death of a four-year-old child, who contracted the highly contagious respiratory disease, at the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay on Thursday. The child is the youngest of the seven persons the virus has killed in Jamaica.

“We are guided by the protocols from the Ministry of Health, so in a case like this, the ministry would step in, and counselling would be provided for those persons (surviving relatives) through the protocols that would have been established by the ministry,” Greene said in a brief statement.

Concerning the family of the four-year-old, he said that trained counsellors have already been dispatched from the WRHA to offer support to them.

“To my understanding, personnel from the WRHA would have visited with and had discussions with the relatives of the child. The outbreak is naturally taking a toll on people’s psyches, worse so in the case of a child’s death, but we have experienced persons who would go and speak to them and offer the relevant counselling that would be necessary,” said Greene.