Ms Fearon’s death shames us all

THE TRAGIC, and apparently avoidable, death of Jodian Fearon won’t be listed in the running count of casualties of COVID-19. But nearly as much as any of the seven direct fatalities of the novel coronavirus, she was a victim of the infection – of the fear, stigma and discrimination it elicits, and, very palpably in this case, a massive bungling by a raft of institutions and healthcare professionals, who appear to have forgotten the tenets of the Hippocratic Oath. Bureaucracy gained ascendancy when humanity should have prevailed. And that is to the shame of us all.

A number of investigations have begun into Ms Fearon’s death, including one by the police to determine if anyone was criminally liable, on which this newspaper makes no judgement. These probes notwithstanding, The University of the West Indies (UWI) ought to have a special interest in the Fearon case, given the involvement of an associated hospital. The UWI should conduct its own probe into the matter. The case should also cause an in-depth analysis and review of Jamaica’s protocols for the handling and management of COVID-19-related cases, as well as the campaign to tackle stigma and prejudice against anyone with the virus, including language used in these messages.

Ms Fearon would have been 24 years old yesterday. She was 38 weeks pregnant, or two weeks ahead of her normal time for delivery, which was planned for the privately owned Andrews Memorial Hospital. But with Ms Fearon having developed complications with her pregnancy, her doctor decided to induce birth, setting off a chain of developments, over which at least four hospitals have traded blame, raising questions about Jamaica’s capacity to cope should the COVID-19 epidemic radically escalate in the island.

ACCESS DENIED

First, having checked in at Andrews, Ms Fearon displayed symptoms similar to those associated with COVID-19, for which she was eventually tested negative. The hospital didn’t want to keep her because, it said, it didn’t have a COVID-19 isolation ward. So, her doctor attempted to have her admitted to the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, the Government’s specialist maternity hospital. He was denied. That hospital’s handful of COVID-19 beds were already taken.

Much of what happened afterwards is rived with controversy. Ms Fearon’s doctor says Andrews, apparently fearing his patient’s possible COVID-19 infection, cleared its maternity ward, suggesting that it had changed its mind and was prepared to keep Ms Fearon. But according to Andrews, when it was decided that she should give birth by Caesarean section and would probably need intubation, the private anaesthesiologists engaged by her doctor backed out, afraid the patient might have COVID-19.

Ms Fearon’s doctor next approached the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), the main teaching hospital of the Faculty of Medicine of the UWI, which appoints several of its governors, and two of whose former professors serve, respectively, as chairman and vice-chairman of its board. According to Ms Fearon’s doctor, he renewed attempts to have his patient transferred to the UHWI. But while its intensive care unit (ICU) said it could accommodate her, the maternity ward said no. Ms Fearon’s doctor then turned to the Spanish Town Hospital, where television images captured him agitatedly pacing outside, while his patient waited in an ambulance for an hour, as the hospital prepared to accommodate her. Having given birth at Spanish Town, she was subsequently transferred to the UHWI, where she died.

The UHWI, however, claimed that before Ms Fearon finally came into its care, it had attempted to help. Aware that Ms Fearon was 38 weeks pregnant and in labour, it had dispatched a team, including a top gynaecologist, to Andrews, apparently to somehow help in her care. But by the time they arrived, the UHWI said, Ms Fearon had been removed.

SIMILAR INSTANCE

This newspaper can’t claim to be completely surprised by these sorry events. They were, in a sense, foreshadowed by the situation at the private Hargreaves Memorial Hospital in Mandeville at the outset of COVID-19 in Jamaica, when a doctor, suspected of being infected with the virus, was turned away from the institution. Our concern deepened when the Government’s senior epidemiologist, Karen Webster Kerr, revealed to a parliamentary committee that testing for COVID-19 was, at the time, lagging because of the apprehension of healthcare professionals conducting the tests. We then advised the health authorities that there was work to be done to sort out its COVID-19 protocols and in developing an education campaign against stigma and discrimination. Clearly, not enough happened. The authorities need to get back to the drawing board.

In this instance, we are particularly concerned that there is controversy over the behaviour of the UHWI, which, while it falls within Jamaica’s healthcare system, is also a regional institution linked to a university ranked among the world’s top five per cent. What the UHWI imparts to the students it helps to train must be more than the technical skills in medicine, but the humanity to which those skills are expected to be employed, each individual at a time. That – and the importance of having a properly run hospital associated with the UWI’s medical faculty – is why Hilary Beckles, the university vice-chancellor, should want to get to the depths of this matter.

At the same time, everything must be done to provide justice for Ms Fearon and the family left with the callousness of her death.