Health minister confident of country’s medical response services at the ports of entry
Published:Thursday | January 26, 2023 | 12:50 AMMark Titus/ Gleaner Writer
While inflight emergencies are rare, questions have been raised about the ability of Sangster International Airport to handle unexpected eventualities, but the operator of Montego Bay Jamaica Limited is expressing confidence in the system in place.
Sharon Hislop Holt, manager of commercial business development and marketing at MBJ, told The Gleaner that measures are in place to address all types of emergencies. These, she says, are regularly tested to verify their effectiveness in coordination with the company’s emergency response plan.
This includes hiring a private medical facility to respond to medical emergencies at the airport.
“The contractor employs trained and certified medical practitioners for this engagement, including a cadre of trained nurses that are rotated for duties at the airport where they are stationed to cover all flight operations.”
Ambulance services are also provided by the contracted medical facility on a need basis, she added.
Hislop was responding to queries from the news team following concerns about the response time and the resources available at the premier tourism gateway to Jamaica, owned by Mexican firm Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP). However, while she did not reveal the contracted health facility, The Gleaner team was reliably informed that it is the Spanish-owned private health facility Hospiten, located eight kilometres from the airport.
This follows an incident in December when a passenger allegedly fell ill inflight to Montego Bay, but there was no emergency medical practitioner immediately available on the passenger’s arrival.
“So (we) just landed, (and) there’s a medical situation on board. It took 20 minutes for the local nurse to come, and there’s no ambulance that has come as yet to take the guy off or even a stretcher,” said passenger Stewy P on December 20. “I was giving somebody the play-by-play on WhatsApp and the first message was sent at 1:12 p.m. as we were taxiing to the gate, (but) the nurse (and I’m genuinely not sure if she is one) didn’t come on until 1:37 p.m.”
According to him, the paramedics arrived 15 minutes later, causing him to conclude that there is no ambulance service at the airport.
FIRST POINT OF CONTACT
The Sangster International Airport Twitter account in response stated that emergency response is their top priority. “Once a medical situation is reported, the nurse responds and an ambulance is dispatched.”
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that medical emergencies are not particularly common, with only one in every 600 commercial flights experiencing a medical challenge during the journey. However, this amounts to some 44,000 flights across the world annually.
Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton told the news team that he was satisfied with the strength of the medical response services at the ports of entry.
“We have Port Health, trained nurses, and a sick bay at both international airports and they are the first point of contact if there is an emergency on an aircraft or within the precincts of the airport,” he said, following the handover of four ambulances to the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA) recently.
“In case that you need further support, then the ambulance comes in and moves the patient to an institution.”
Lennox Wallace, parish manager of St James Health Services, supported his boss, explaining that there are three layers of support should an emergency occur.
“There is a medical office employed by MBJ to deal with medical emergencies seven days per week, and the St James Health Department also has an office there,” Wallace said “Whatever is more serious, the ambulance or other medical personnel are deployed.”
“From a technical point of view, it (human resource) is strong, because,” added Wallace, “you have the airport medical team; the quarantine unit has medical personnel there and you have the hospital.”
SPECIALLY TRAINED
According to the Sangster International Airport (SIA) website, its emergency response service (ERS) is composed of 37 firefighters specially trained to respond to accidents, incidents, and natural disasters. It also states that firefighters are trained in basic first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and the use of automated external defibrillators.
Public relations officer at the Jamaica Fire Brigade, Emilio Eubanks, says the standard operating procedure is that local firefighters are placed on standby to give support when notified of any form of emergency at both airports. “Some of these questions are for the Airport Authority and the management of Norman Manley International, but I do know that they operate their own fire station and are not reportable to us,” he said.
GAP is also the exclusive operator of PAC Kingston Airport Limited (PACKAL) operator of the Norman Manley International Airport. Davarairi, another Twitter user, who was a nurse at NMIA prior to the takeover, says an efficient response system was in place, back then.
“After they took over they got rid of the nursing department, I don’t know what they do now,” she said. “I don’t know if they have someone on call. But I know we had more than one ambulance.”
“In addition, the towers would notify my department that there is a situation even before the aircraft lands, we would be waiting at the landing bridge to board and the paramedics would be down below on the tarmac with the ambulance.”
Fernando Vistrain, CEO at Norman Manley International Airport, says all systems are in place based on international standards but acknowledged changes to the organisational structure when PACKAL took charge. “Organisational chart was different from the previous operator, yes, it was in all departments.”
Nine EMTs are currently on the NMIA payroll, while an ambulance is always on location. Fernando Vistrain says recertification is done every two years.
In 2018, authorities at the NMIA conducted a multimillion-dollar simulation exercise of an aircraft crash into Kingston Harbour.
The three-hour-long exercise was a collaboration of several entities, including NMIA response teams, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the Jamaica Defence Force, the Ministry of Health, the Jamaica Fire Brigade, and the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, and was in keeping with international standards, which mandates a similar drill at major airports at least every two years.
The simulation, which included passengers being rescued at sea, the application of first-aid services, and the transportation of victims to nearby hospitals, also evaluated the response to environmental hazards such as oil spills at sea. It featured the use of helicopters, ambulances, airport fire trucks, and marine police service vehicles and more than 100 volunteers being treated by doctors and nurses on site. Keen attention was paid to response times, the availability of resources, and communication.
According to CEO of the Airports Authority of Jamaica, Audley Deidrick, emergency services are of the highest level at all the airports, including the Ian Fleming International Airport (IFIA) in Boscobel, St Mary. He says medical practitioners don’t have to be on location.
“As an international airport, there are certain basic emergency services as one of the features
that must be present,” Deidrick acknowledged. “So, the Ian Fleming Airport, for an emergency, has a fully manned firefighting and rescue facility which is equipped with trained firefighters and rescue staff, and also a fire truck,” he disclosed. “But in terms of medical emergency services, the size of the facility does not require it to have medical personnel on property on a 24-hour basis, as do larger airports.
The airport was opened in 2011 but received its first international commercial flight last June after it was upgraded to facilitate larger airplanes.
With international standard accreditation comes certain obligations as it relates to emergency services and according to Deidrick, the airport is meeting those obligations.
But according to Deidrick: “The norm is to have health presence on a needs basis unlike the
larger international airports that have health professionals present on a routine basis or on a
staffed basis, but since the advent of COVID-19 we have been required to establish more or less
a health facility of a quarantine nature so that if persons turn up, particularly with COVID-19
infection symptoms, they are taken in that facility and properly
screened and then handed, from there, to the health authorities.”
In terms of security, a new police station was opened in July 2021 at the airport, thus offering 24-hour service, that will also be available to adjoining communities.
The local aviation community was sternly tested in December 2009, when 145 adults and three infants, flying from Miami to Kingston, narrowly escaped with their lives after American Airlines Flight 331 overshot the runway at the Norman Manley International Airport and stopped mere inches from the sea just off the Port Royal main road.
The aviation accident report made public in 2015, among other things, blamed the Jamaican authorities for ignoring basic safeguards that might have prevented the crash. American Airlines had to fork out millions of dollars in damages to passengers who were injured in the crash.
Although confident that both airports are adequately equipped to handle a major emergency, Mark Hart, chairman of the board of the Airport Authority of Jamaica, says both cities would have a challenge dealing with major catastrophes.
“It is pretty much the case with most of these islands that if there was a major road incident where hundreds of people are impacted, there would be some challenges.”
The New England Journal of Medicine study identifies nausea, fainting, and respiratory problems as the most common types of emergencies experienced during flights, but said that less than one per cent of passengers who experienced a medical complication have led to a fatality.