Patients, workers must be screened!

Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer

A FORMER health minister has weighed in on the debate on how health authorities can circumnavigate the array of problems facing the sector, such as the episode that led to an HIV-positive woman coming in contact with a baby unrelated to her at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital.

John Junor is calling for "pre-emptive strike under certain classified rubric" to stave off what Opposition Spokesman on Health Dr Fenton Ferguson characterised as the steps and missteps bedevilling the public-health sector.

In short, Junor is advocating the use of cost-effective screening of persons in state care.

This suggestion means that the managers of health care in Jamaica must also be screened.

The former health minister is of the view that the implementation of affordable security measures to limit access to intruders can work very well.

"There just has to be a heightened awareness at the management level to deal with the vulnerable in government care."

Junor said public-health facilities are in need of measures which anticipate problems that can arise at vulnerable points at state-run institutions, including places of safety.

Stricter measures needed

"There needs to be physical measures - such as cameras and the use of access cards," said Junor, who was the last health minister in the P.J. Patterson-led administration. "These are security measures that don't cost much," he stressed.

"We need to take measures to address the problems that arise more often than not, including, stealing and mix-up of babies, and security in relation to mentally challenged persons," Junor said.

It was Junor who, in 2002, took the Baby Pansy case of a mix-up at the Mandeville Regional Hospital to the courts to obtain a declaration that the child was dead in order to bring finality to the impasse and secure a settlement.

The list of disasters brought about by seemingly bizarre experiences and a tragedy of errors at some public hospitals is as unending as it is heart-rending, affecting mainly the poor.

For many in the public domain, the situation is mystifying as some of these missteps - such as babies being swapped, lost, stolen or simply found in the hands of unauthorised people - have nothing to do with financial problems at these facilities.

Being poor, the victims are usually the people without the wherewithal to be stretched on an emergency flight overseas for medical treatment, so scores venture each day into Jamaica's ailing public hospitals, hoping for the best.

All too often, the relief being sought by those in pain and despair seem dreadfully elusive.

To make matters worse, the ailments at some of these institutions have turned out to be far more life-threatening than before they entered these facilities.

These so-called missteps, however, cannot be dismissed as rare occurrences in a system that is functioning smoothly.

The health sector was again placed under scrutiny last week when a baby and a mentally challenged woman (not the child's mother), who is reportedly HIV positive, made intimate, mother-child contact under strange circumstances.

Inadequate response

The response from the chairman of the South Eastern Regional Health Authority, Tanny Shirley, last week, left Jamaicans even more baffled.

Shirley's comments in relation to the likelihood of the child contracting HIV elicited a chorus of queries as to why a senior professional with medical expertise was not brought into the mix.

When the body of an infant was found on the premises of the Victoria Jubilee Hospital last year, Shirley fumbled for a plausible response.

The public was told that the baby was likely to have been drawn on to the compound by an animal.

Opposition Spokesman on Health Dr Fenton Ferguson late last week listed evidence that the health sector was in shambles.

He cited the attempted rape of a female doctor at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, the discovery of decomposing corpses at the Kingston Public Hospital, followed by the mix-up of a male and a female baby at the May Pen Hospital, as evidence of this.

Guided by a chorus of defensive responses and promises of probes, health administrators seem inured by the plight of those who end up victims.