Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Island hospitals call for supplies
Puerto Rico’s health system struggled even before Maria
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hurricane Maria has stretched the health system to the breaking point in Puerto Rico, which has higher rates of diabetes, asthma, cancer and tropical diseases like Zika than the mainland.
The U.S. territory’s health system was already precarious, with a population of 3.4 million that is generally sicker, older and poorer than that of the mainland. There are also long waits and a severe shortage of specialists as a result of a decadelong economic recession.
In Maria’s wake, hospitals and their employees are wrestling with the same shortages of basic necessities as everyone else. There are people who are unable to keep insulin or other medicines refrigerated. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to the tropical heat as widespread power outages mean no air conditioning. And amid the widespread disruption, it’s often difficult to get kids to a doctor, especially for families who can’t afford to drive long distances on a tank running out of gasoline.
Maria knocked out electricity to the entire island, and only a handful of Puerto Rico’s 63 hospitals had generators operating at full power. Even those started to falter amid a shortage of diesel to fuel them and a complete breakdown in the distribution network.
Patients were sent to Centro Medico and several other major facilities, quickly overwhelming them.
Jorge Matta, chief executive officer of the nonprofit that runs the complex of hospitals that make up Centro Medico, said progress was being made on restoring power capacity there and finding places to send patients whose homes were destroyed. He said they expected to have all 20 operating rooms at the trauma center back up by today. But other parts of the island are in much worse shape.
“Right now we have hospitals [elsewhere] that need diesel, they need water, they need oxygen,” Matta said.
On Saturday, authorities evacuated dozens of patients at one hospital in San Juan after its backup generator failed. They were taken to other nearby hospitals already struggling with an overflow of patients.
At the Doctors’ Center Hospital in the northern city of Bayamon, Dr. Victor Rivera said they are so overwhelmed that he has been intercepting patients in the ER waiting room and even outside while people are still in their cars, and sending them on their way with medical advice or a prescription in non-emergency cases.
Rivera said the hospital, like many others, is relying on overworked generators.
“They’ve been hit with an enormous amount of work,” he said, noting that the hospital had turned them on earlier during Hurricane Irma and increasingly worries they could fail. “This could potentially be a catastrophe for any hospital.”
With capacity maxed out, he has been sending patients who suffer from asthma, diabetes and other conditions to other hospitals nearby.
Centro Medico serves as the main trauma center for many around the Caribbean, and when Maria hit, it was already treating patients from the island of St. Maarten who were injured in Hurricane Irma.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello has ordered that all major hospitals be placed on a priority list for receiving diesel.