Crisis in public hospitals

Claudia Gardner, Assignment Coordinator

WESTERN BUREAU:Head of the School of Public Health and Health Technology in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Technology (UTech), Professor Winston Davidson, says the bed capacity situation in the four major government hospitals in western Jamaica is now "assuming crisis proportions".

Davidson made this revelation during a keynote address at a fundraiser for the proposed Negril International Hospital at the Grand Palladium Hotel in Lucea last Saturday night.

According to the professor, since the Cornwall Regional Hospital was built in Montego Bay almost 40 years ago, none of the hospitals in the western region has had an increase in bed capacity.

He said with the present conditions of the International Monetary Fund Agreement, the Government of Jamaica is "constrained to build more hospitals in the near future to increase the hospital bed capacity of the western region".

"The Cornwall Regional Hospital has a bed complement of 417, and the rate of occupancy is 91 per cent. In other words, it is a facility that is the main hospital in the western region, which is almost always full," he said.

"Savanna-la-Mar, with 140 beds, has a bed occupancy of 111 per cent, so we ask, how? Perhaps if you go to the maternity wards, you may see two women in a bed, or maybe two adolescents in a bed, or maybe two children in a bed.

"Whatever it is, the occupancy in the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital exceeds the number of beds. Falmouth has 60 beds, and the bed occupancy is 106 per cent; and Noel Holmes in Lucea has 38 beds and approximately 70 per cent occupancy. So the bed occupancy rate of all the hospitals in the western region is 93 per cent," he said.

Davidson said because there has been no expansion of hospital services in tandem with the region's growing population, the west was now suffering from an overcrowding of hospital wards, long waiting times for admission, and a compromise on spatial requirements for clinicians to efficiently care for patients.

"The population increased by 40 per cent since 1974 to now, and services have not kept pace with those demands. An analysis of the current situation in the western region reveals some major deficiencies in the health care services delivered not only to adults, but to children and adolescents. There is a major need for these services to be delivered outside of Kingston in areas such as St James, Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny, where there are no specialised child and adolescent hospital services," he said.

Davidson said because of the western region's status as the tourism hub of Jamaica, visitor access to the services of hospitals is a priority. He said with the imminent increase in the population of adults over 60 years old, there will be an increase in chronic diseases and an increase in the need for services for the elderly, which should be addressed.