Not true, Dr Ford!
May Pen Hospital SMO counters claim no attempt made to resuscitate wounded soldier before he died
Aclaim by popular Kingston physician Dr Jephthah Ford that no attempt had been made by medical personnel to resuscitate a soldier before he died of a gunshot wound in September was yesterday rubbished by May Pen Hospital Senior Medical Officer Dr Bradley Edwards.
“My team is very concerned that after doing some of their best resuscitation work, in terms of bringing the soldier back to life on two occasions, got him to a state where they could transfer him to the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), that there is this claim that there is no evidence of him having any resuscitation whatsoever, and they are very concerned that that is being said, because they know exactly what they did, and the effort that they put in to actually get this man off alive to the University Hospital, ” Dr Edwards told the Jamaica Observer.
Ford had claimed, in a story published in yesterday’s Sunday Observer, that a post-mortem on the body of Private Reneil King had suggested there was no effort made at UHWI to resuscitate the soldier. “It seems an assumption of inevitable death was made because of the entry and exit head wounds,” Ford alleged.
King was part of a joint police/ military team deployed to a location on September 24, 2020 in Milk River, Clarendon, on a narcotics operation, where 2,900 pounds of marijuana and a boat were seized. It was reported that while conducting a search the team came under fire from gunmen, and during the firefight King was shot and injured. At the time, the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) reported that the joint team provided first aid to King before he was airlifted to May Pen Hospital and subsequently to UHWI where he succumbed to his injuries.
However, Dr Ford, who said he was asked by Private King’s family for assistance, is challenging some aspects of the JDF’S report.
He told the Observer that after observing the post-mortem, which was conducted last Monday, he was satisfied that King has been shot by a member of the JDF because the post-mortem found that the entry and exit wounds on King’s body were consistent with that of an M4 rifle. However, Dr Ford admitted that he had never seen an M4 wound in the field, or in any of the hundreds of post-mortems examinations he had done involving gunshot wounds.
In relation to his resuscitation allegation, Dr Ford said he and the attending doctor at the post-mortem scraped the dead soldier’s arm to find evidence of the life-saving procedure.
“We literally rubbed off his arm to identify an IV trace that could prove they made an attempt to resuscitate him and save his life. We did not see any and I’m writing the University Hospital about that, which was negligent on their part. There was no puncture wound to show IV or blood infusion. Of all the extensive photographs we have, we did not see at any point where an attempt was made to resuscitate the soldier,” Dr Ford said.
However, yesterday Dr Edwards said his colleagues at May Pen Hospital did indeed administer intravenous fluid (IV) as they worked to save Private King’s life.
“We spent a good while on him; he had a cardiac arrest on two occasions and we brought him back on both occasions with IV fluids going, everything in place,” Dr Edwards explained. “He would not have left May Pen Hospital alive had he not been resuscitated, so we cannot understand where that report would have come from.”