THE STEADY HAND OVER COVID
CMO Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie thrives on crises
“QUITE BY accident.” That’s how Jamaica’s highest-ranking public health expert recounts her entry into medicine – a decision that inevitably prepared her to lead Jamaica’s response to the greatest global medical crisis in a century.
Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie said that her brother was applying to medical school and filled out an application for her as well.
“He brought the application to me and I signed it. I got through, and at that time, it was such a prestigious thing to get into medicine that I could not turn it down,” she recalled.
Now Jamaica’s chief medical officer (CMO), Bisasor-McKenzie never imagined taking the lead role on the frontline of public health when she joined the Ministry of Health and Wellness as director of emergency medical services five years ago.
The 55-year-old is the primary clinical adviser to the health minister and the Government – a role that’s worlds away from her dad’s early ambitions for her to become a pharmacologist.
Bisasor-McKenzie, the recipient of the 2020 RJRGLEANER Honour Award in the category of Public Service, considers it an honour to have served as CMO since 2018, but might not have expected to have been thrust into the glare of cameras on TV and online as hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans hung on to her every word for updates on COVID-19.
She credits the f amily matriarch for setting the template for her gritty character.
“My mother was a very strong person. I will always remember her as the person who always pushed for excellence,” the medical expert told The Gleaner.
STOIC COMPOSURE AND ASSURANCE
The stoic composure and assurance she oozed at press conferences and in other fora were a source of stability in the early months of the pandemic in 2020. That steady hand also steered the management of the disease during the heights of the crisis in February and March this year when deaths and infections soared, hospital admissions maxxed bedspace capacity, and patients gasped for oxygen.
Jamaica passed two crucial COVID-19 milestones in June 2021 – 50,000 cases and 1,000 deaths – but the falling infections since the late March weekend lockdowns has driven down a positivity rate that was consistently above 30 per cent.
But crisis is nothing new to BisasorMcKenzie, who became director of emergency medical services in 2014 and shortly after faced a series of emergencies: chikungunya, Ebola, Zika, dengue, deaths at neonatal nurseries, and noxious fumes at the Cornwall Regional Hospital.
“It was really like a crash course in everything public health for my first couple of years,” she quipped.
The youngest of three children born in Trelawny, Bisasor-McKenzie went parish-hopping – largely driven by her father’s occupation as a chemist in the sugar industry – between St Catherine, St Elizabeth, and Clarendon.
She started at Spanish Town Primary, then Santa Cruz All-Age, back to Spanish Town Primary, and then to Denbigh.
Bisasor-McKenzie later attended Glenmuir High in Clarendon up to grade 11, and then grades 12 and 13 at St Jago High in St Catherine.
After high school, she completed an undergraduate degree in natural sciences and worked in the food-processing industry for a year.
On completing medical school, she interned at the Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine, then worked in the emergency department, before a short stint at the health centre at St Jago Park.
The medical doctor ventured i nto family practice for seven years before pursuing higher education in emergency medicine. BisasorMcKenzie returned to the Spanish Town Hospital as head of the Accident and Emergency Department for a decade.
Bisasor-McKenzie prefers to be out of the public eye. In fact, she believes that public health is at its most efficient “when you don’t even know it exists because everything is going well and the population is healthy”.
Various industry interests have leaned hard on the Government to relax a range of coronavirus restrictions, in opposition to medical advice. The CMO knows well the weight of lobbyists but has been willing to make tough calls – even unpopular ones. And she said she’s no fence-sitter.
“Indecisiveness could not be part of the game. We had to make our decisions and stick by our decisions; but if two weeks later there was a change, then we had to say there is a change and this is why.
“It’s not because I was an idiot two weeks ago, it’s because times have changed and we have to change with the times,” BisasorMcKenzie told The Gleaner.
CRISIS STRENGTHENED SECTOR
Bisasor-McKenzie said that the current crisis has begun to strengthen public health i n Jamaica in almost every facet. Among the improvements are increased testing capacity, identifying numerous quarantine and isolation centres, and developing expertise i n activating and relocating field hospitals through coordination with the Jamaica Defence Force.
The ministry has also trained more than 1,500 new community health aides, gained experience with monitoring community quarantines, begun remote consultation with patients, lengthened prescription time from three months to six months, and offered delivery of pharmaceuticals for the elderly.
“We have to continue with some of these practices and to ensure that the resources are in place to widen the scope, because all of these things are going to prevent overcrowding in our health facilities. Many people don’t need to be in those health facilities, but it does not deny them their care,” the CMO said.
For months, Bisasor-McKenzie and her team were at the grind in meetings until 1 o’clock in the morning as they gauged developments.
Two of her children are doctors, and she is waiting anxiously for the results of her 16-year-old daughter who recently sat Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams.
“It’s like I’m continuously at work, but my family has been very supportive of me. I reserve time for family, and we still continue to do a lot of the things that we would normally do,” the wife and mother of three said.
‘It was really like a crash course in everything public health for my first couple of years.’