Damion Mitchell & Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporters
MCCARTNEY
SENIOR MEDICAL officer at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), Dr. Trevor McCartney, is concerned that the unavoidable allocation of scarce resources to treat violence-related injuries could result in the re-emergence of communicable diseases.
He said that there is a risk because treating an increasing number of injuries caused by violence means that there may not be adequate money to continue the current anti-disease initiatives.
According to Dr. McCartney, within the past five years just over 275,000 patients have been seen at KPH's Accident and Emergency Department. Almost 100,000 of these cases resulted from violent injuries.
"When we look at our spectrum of diseases at present, while the medical emergencies average about 49 per cent and violent crimes, just under 40 per cent, the admission rate of 20,000 patients suffering from violent crime per year, result in a significant devastation to the other persons seeking care," said Dr. McCartney during last Wednesday's Gleaner Editors' Forum at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston. It was dubbed 'Guns, Gangs and Garrisons - Impact of Violence on Health and Society'. These injuries have led to cancellations of one in three elective surgeries and delays for persons with other emergencies, Dr. McCartney said.
He was among several stakeholders in the health sector who are concerned that the increasing incidence of violence could severely restrict the ability of the state to provide adequate health services.
TRAUMA CARE NOT OPTIMAL
During the forum, head of the Department of Surgery at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), Professor Archie McDonald, said the care currently available for trauma patients in Jamaica is not optimal when assessed by international health standards. He added that despite the prevalence of violence-related injuries in the country, there has been a major difficulty in accessing funds for a training programme for doctors in the delivery of care to trauma patients.
For her part, Dr. Elizabeth Ward, director of disease prevention and control in the Health Ministry, lamented that high costs attributed to treating violence-related injuries were affecting health-care budgets. Last year, it cost the health services $743 million to treat such injuries. Much of this money has been unrecoverable.
In UHWI's case, "over an 18-month period from December 2003 to May 2004, injured patients were charged about $24 million but only about $5 million was recovered by the hospital," said Prof. McDonald. He said last year that treating injured patients, most of them young males, accounted for approximately 14 per cent of the total recurrent budget for the hospital.
On Wednesday, Dr. Ward said that more than 32,000 visits to hospitals were because of violence. This was often physical or sexual violence. The injuries were committed by persons known to the victims, often in their own homes.
