The sad case of Constable Donique Anderson
IN the throes of the Christmas holidays last year a young constable returned home from the US knowing, apparently, that her days were numbered.
Unable to secure the liver transplant she had gone there to seek, Constable Donique Anderson died quietly at University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) on December 23, two days before Christmas.
The loss of the promising Jamaican cop triggered heavy mourning among family, friends, the police force, the Jamaican Consulate in New York, and the Diaspora in general where it is felt that, had better planning been undertaken, she might have made it.
Using her passing as a teachable moment, leading members of the Diaspora urged Jamaicans back home to understand that, while it might sound good, sending patients to the US for organ transplants without serious planning ahead could have a tragic ending.
That is the point we wish to underscore in this space today, as well as to embrace the words of Ms Claudette Powell, a registered nurse who chairs the Global Jamaica Diaspora Health Sector for the north-east US.
“It is critical that proper preparations are made by anyone wishing to seek treatment in the US for autoimmune hepatitis — the liver condition from which Ms Anderson died. This is also true of other like illnesses.
“Evaluation and assessment to determine the medical condition of the person seeking such treatment, as well as the identification of a donor in advance are critical,” said Ms Powell.
She was among a group of Jamaicans based in the US who rallied to the cause in May last year after the Jamaica Police Federation organised a trip to Harlem Hospital in Manhattan in an ill-fated bid to get a liver transplant for the cop. She was unable to find a donor in time.
Ms Powell argued the police federation had meant well in sending Ms Anderson to the US, but that the trip was “not properly thought out, nor was the complexity of such arrangements properly understood”.
It is understandable that Jamaicans with chronic organ diseases would seek to find donors overseas. In our culture, people still widely believe that they should go to their graves with their bodies intact and so don’t routinely donate their organs which could save lives.
Jamaica surged ahead of the Caribbean by being the first to introduce organ transplantation in the region, thanks to the almost magical work of Professor Lawson Douglas in September 1970, which gave us the first deceased donor kidney transplant at Kingston Public Hospital.
Yet, from 1970 to 1993, there were only two kidney transplants per year. Between 1994 and 1995, a living donor programme was developed at UHWI, bringing an increase in transplants, but that waned after 2001 and did not resurge until 2013.
Development of an electronic data registry was designed by the Caribbean Institute of Nephrology and a national registry of patients with kidney disease was developed for Jamaica and the Caribbean, but its utilisation has been relatively poor.
Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has promised to spearhead an organ donation campaign; however, the subsequent silence about what results might have been achieved suggests that he has either given up or has nothing to report.
In the meantime, it is sensible to heed the warning of Ms Powell and plan well ahead of seeking organ transplants overseas.