THERE HAVE been two tragic occurrences recently in the Jamaican health system, one at the Mandeville Hospital and the other at the Spanish Town Hospital, both improbably involving babies.
In the Mandeville case, there has apparently been negligence on someone's part in the identification of a baby's body, the hospital blaming the funeral parlour and the funeral parlour blaming the hospital. The grieving parents are left in a limbo of doubt as to what really happened to their child, unable to bring closure to its lost remains.
Mr. John Junor, Minister of Health, has ordered an investigation which in the nature of such things, will take weeks if not months to complete. What we the public are left with is, on the one hand, deep sympathy for the parents and, on the other, astonishment at their tenacity over many months in insisting that the corpse given to them for burial was not their offspring. The strength of natal bonding almost surpasses our understanding.
In the incident at the Spanish Town Hospital it appears that a Caesarean section ordered by a doctor was too long delayed so that when a normal delivery was attempted the baby died and the mother injured in the process. Medical negligence per se may not be involved but the fact that the hospital had only one operating theatre available to cope with all emergency cases over a weekend certainly contributed to the tragedy.
If this is a case of lack of resources, the blame lies squarely with the administration and delivery of health care in Jamaica. There can be absolutely no excuse for a young, healthy but poor Jamaican couple to lose a baby because an acceptable level of care was not available at a public hospital. This case did not involve some esoteric First World procedure. Delivery by Caesarean section is routine in modern medicine.
There have been persistent rumours that all is not well in the health care system and the poignancy of these two incidents leads us to urge Mr. Junor to order an overall review of the system. In the meantime we presume that the two cases will be speedily investigated and the public kept informed.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
