‘I’ll always be grateful to Bustamante’

Peter Henry remembers quite vividly the period when his son, Steven, was admitted to the Bustamante Hospital for Children (BHC) with pneumonia 16 years ago.

Critically ill, the four-year-old spent eight weeks in the hospital, three of which were in the intensive care unit (ICU), with his doctors unsure whether he would survive.

“It was a devastating, hard pain, but one of the painful things is that when your child is so young, they can’t really express how they’re feeling, the problem that they are facing ... . It was a feeling as if you were a zombie; those feelings you can’t really explain,” Henry told The Gleaner.

During those moments, Henry said that he relied on and was comforted by the expertise of the staff of the St Andrew-based hospital.

Their commitment to his son’s recovery paid off as Steven was able to re-enter school, compete in sports activities, and is now enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, with no long-term effects from his illness.

“They were there every second, monitoring, making [corrective] actions; they were excellent,” he said of the medical staff.

Steven also extolled the services provided by the staff.

“I will always be grateful to the Bustamante Hospital for Children, for the care and love that you gave me. This allowed me to truly enjoy my life,” he shared via video message on Thursday during the launch of the hospital’s 60th-anniversary celebrations. “You always go above and beyond and work tirelessly to ensure that there is a positive outcome. You are the true heroes of my family.”

Henry’s story is one of many that the paediatric hospital has penned since it was established in 1963.

Growing from a 40-bed ward at the Kingston Public Hospital to start out, with a 200-bed capacity at its current location, it now boasts a 279-bed capacity, which includes a five-bed ICU. The hospital’s accident and emergency department, which operates 24 hours daily, sees approximately 50,000 patients each year. And specialist clinics are held five days per week in the outpatient department, with approximately 35,000 clinic visits annually.

“Despite the challenges and the odds that may be against us in periods of distress, … institutions like Bustamante – public healthcare in Jamaica – have done far more good than sometimes they are recognised for,” Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said during the anniversary press launch.

He outlined plans to further improve the hospital’s infrastructure under a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan, which includes the expansion of ward spaces to provide an additional 100 beds, construction of a diagnostic services block, an operating theatre suite, an accident and emergency building, a specialist outpatient block, and a new cardiac wing.

“We need more space. We need more ward capacity, especially for the specialist services. It is, indeed, our vision to improve the capacity of our wards so we can accommodate patients who need to be admitted for specialist care,” BHC Senior Medical Officer Dr Michelle-Ann Richards Dawson shared.

Tufton also lauded the hospital for its distinguished reputation of providing quality healthcare to children in Jamaica and the wider region as it is the only specialist paediatric hospital in the English-speaking Caribbean.

And as the hospital looks towards another 60 years, the minister said the focus will be on making it even better, which will involve building out an improved waiting area for its accident and emergency department to make the waiting process more comfortable.

“Where care is going to be administered and triage has to take place, the wait is almost guaranteed. The extent of that weight and how we wait is what we need to focus on,” he said.

Addressing concerns of overcrowding at the hospital, Tufton said that this was a typical feature of healthcare.

And while he urged the hospital to adjust in more-demanding circumstances, he also signalled that the burden will soon be lightened with the construction of the US$43-million Western Children and Adolescents Hospital in Montego Bay, St James.

This facility, he said, will not only be more modern, but will have a 250-bed capacity.

“That facility will provide all the specialist services that you are providing and perhaps more, new equipment, and will benefit from the kind of expertise on a larger campus. What that will do is take some of the pressure from Bustamante up to the age of 12 years old,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com