Puerto Rico’s health system hovers ‘on life support’
Patients face death as transportation and communication remain crippled
Two weeks after Hurricane Maria toppled communication towers, wrecked the power grid and knocked out water systems, medical officials said the island’s health system is “on life support.”
“We have hospitals that are working, but eventually, we are going to have to transfer patients,” said Carlos Méndez, an associate administrator at the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital, one of the island’s top medical facilities, in the Hato Rey district.
Méndez, whose hospital has Puerto Rico’s only fully functioning ward for cardiothoracic surgery — for treatments inside the chest — said the island’s health system “is on life support.”
Among the multiple trials facing the medical system:
Patients are dying because of complications related to the primitive conditions and transportation difficulties.
A lack of transportation in small towns makes it tough to get patients to larger hospitals.
An administrator in a smalltown hospital had to drive her car to an ambulance company a mile away to ask for a patient to be transferred to a larger hospital.
Severe lack of communication capabilities on the island has resulted in less triage and coordination between hospitals, and more patients than usual are arriving at large medical centers, which has stretched capacity.
Doctors are afraid to discharge patients after surgery to places with unsanitary conditions and where care and transportation may not exist.
Wednesday, health officials in Puerto Rico toured the 1,000-bed U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort as it docked in San Juan, the capital. It is the military’s largest floating medical facility, and the ship will be used to help with the medical crisis facing the island of
3.4 million residents. Puerto Rico has 69 hospitals, 64 of which are operating at least partially. Of those, 17 are connected to the power grid, and the rest use generators, according to the office of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. The island’s cellular system is crippled: 14% of antennas and
26% of cell towers are operating. In the hill town of Adjuntas, near Puerto Rico’s southern coast, doctors and nurses at a medical center Sunday celebrated the first shipment of drinking water since Hurricane Maria blasted the town. The Puerto Rican National Guard provided the water.
Orlando López de Victoria, the only cardiothoracic surgeon still on the island, said more patients have arrived sicker than usual because of the difficult conditions.
Some have died. On Monday, he operated on a patient whose transfer to Auxilio Mutuo in Hato Rey was delayed because there was no gasoline. By the time she arrived, her heart was so weak she didn’t survive the surgery.
Tuesday, Gov. Rosselló raised the death toll from Hurricane Maria from 16 to 34.
“One of my patients came with a very infected wound because he has no water to take a shower,” López de Victoria said.
Other cardiac surgeons left the island before the hurricane.
López de Victoria said, “I decided to stay because I love my country, my family and my patients.”