Cherry Tree Lane massacre highlights May Pen Hospital’s ills
Lack of staff, bed spaces, transportation plague facility
Published:Sunday | August 18, 2024 | 12:12 AMCorey Robinson - Senior Staff Reporter
No major surgeries were required for the wounded victims of the Cherry Tree Lane massacre in Four Paths, Clarendon, last Sunday. By last Thursday, only two of those who had arrived at May Pen Hospital’s Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department were still admitted.
However, this tragedy – believed to be the first of its scale in Jamaica’s gang history – has intensified ongoing concerns among the facility’s staff. They have long lamented shortages of equipment, hospital beds, manpower, and transportation, especially in a parish that frequently deals with gunshot wounds from violent gang clashes.
Four days after the gruesome attack, Dr Bradley Edwards, senior medical officer at the hospital, said that last Sunday night’s influx of patients tested the hospital’s mass-casualty protocols. It drained resources such as painkillers and medication for controlling severe bleeding and, most importantly, highlighted a significant shortage of hospital staff and bed space at the facility.
This is exacerbated by the constant stream of accident and gunshot wound victims in the mid-island parish, which, up to August 3, had recorded 41 murders and 41 shooting incidents since the start of the year.
Many of those victims required emergency surgeries and hospital beds.
“They (trauma cases) do take up a significant amount of resources to manage, from the hospital and also from those persons (victims) with regard to time and spaces. That is one of the sad things about not having enough staff to relieve people,” said Edwards, noting the heavy physical and emotional toll on staff having to deal with frequent motor vehicle accidents and gunshot wound trauma cases entering the hospital.
Unlike in other countries, where staff are given time off after certain gruesome incidents, staff at May Pen Hospital are not afforded that luxury. This is because the demand for their presence is unrelentingly high. So, too, is the demand on bed spaces.
“Right now, the demand on the spaces in the hospital is so high that a lot of patients end up staying in the A&E Department awaiting an opportunity to be admitted to the ward. When our A&E is full, we have to be moving patients around until we can sort out something,” he continued. “The hospital is pretty short-staffed in the A&E department, and, right now is not necessarily a good time to come to the hospital with any trauma.”
Meanwhile, hospital staff continue to be on edge. Many of them are residents of communities entangled in a bloody web of gang violence. Now, Edwards hopes measures can be taken by the Ministry of Health and Wellness to provide transportation for staff.
“If we can get a staff bus or some staff buses to pick up people at their homes and carry them to work at night, that would be something we would want,” Edwards told The Sunday Gleaner.
Last Friday, Health Minister Christopher Tufton empathised with the hospital’s staff, noting that other public facilities have been set up in the parish to ease the strain on May Pen. There are also physical expansions planned for that hospital and other health facilities in the parish, Tufton added.
“The truth is that where multiple trauma cases come in, it will more than likely lead to delays. We don’t normally have 17 people being shot in one incident, and so whatever the staff complement is normally, we have to call for back-up or call people in; and in the case of hospital beds, depending on the nature of the trauma, there will be an increased demand on space,” he explained.
For this reason, the Chapelton Hospital has been reopened, and there has also been expansion at the Lionel Town Hospital, which has more doctors and offers a range of services. There is also a plan under a programme with the Inter-American Development Bank to expand the May Pen Hospital as well.
“It is hard to plan, predict, and have staffing and [several bed spaces for] victims of gunshot wounds at the same time because these are all victims which would have a demand on operating theatre time, emergency surgery, and intensive care if necessary,” continued the health minister.
“So one has to see this an outlier event and, God knows, I hope that we don’t see too much of a recurrence of this,” he said, noting that arrangements such as staff transportation are negotiated between the hospitals and their different regional authorities.