May Pen Hospital's 'poor cousin' status

The May Pen Hospital was built in the 1970s, officially opening its doors to the public in December 1974 with one junior doctor and a general surgeon on staff. Built to be a regional hospital then, it only had two wards, having been converted from a nursing home. Former senior medical officer (SMO) of May Pen Hospital, Dr Winston Dawes, said the facility became a full-fledged hospital in 1975. "I got a specialist to come and do the X-rays and she came three times a week and, in no time, we started handling a lot of emergency work, even doing deliveries. As a matter of fact, at one point we were seeing the third highest number of accidents and emergency patients."

Dawes said May Pen soon took over from the Chapelton and Lionel Town hospitals as it was doing surgeries and orthopaedics. He said May Pen was the first Type C hospital to get two doctors.

However, he said, over the years, the hospital has always been playing catch-up with the Spanish Town and Mandeville hospitals because equipment that was meant for that facility was often diverted to other hospitals and health-care facilities, and May Pen was always treated like the "poor cousin".

"It was always a battle, because a lot of times we would try and get equipment to care for our patients and it would be diverted [by the Ministry of Health] elsewhere. One time, we got an ultrasound machine and they gave it away, so we went around them and got another one. Because we were sourcing the equipment and it wasn't being placed here, we had to find other means of getting what we needed here," he explained.

EXPANSION

Eventually, the hospital became overcrowded and so it had to be expanded and that is when a new hospital (building) was built. "When we expanded, we got more space and still more and more people started coming. So we had to expand to take on the five wards and then we got in a physician.

We were the first hospital to get a laparoscopic set from a government agency, and that was in 1998. We also tried to get a renal unit and it was promised to us, but when it got to the region, they decided that Mandeville was the regional hospital, so they should get it first. Yet we had a lot of renal patients down here," said Dawes. "When I came here first, we were a part of the Spanish Town region, but when the Government came up with the regional system in 1997-98, they put us with Mandeville, so again, we were always the poor cousin either way. We still managed anyway, because I had contacts. I knew a lot of persons and I would always ask them to donate much-needed items, which we always received."

- S.S.