Roughly $20m per person to treat worst cases
“If we vaccinate, we are able to extend the healthcare dollar to treating other diseases.”
Dr Carl Bruce, chief of medical staff at UHWI, believes he and his family were fortunate, largely because of precautions taken both at home and work. Assistance received from colleagues around the world were also helpful for staff.
“We instituted a mask mandate long before it became a policy, and that’s the advice from the network of persons we have who have trained here and [are] operating in different parts of the world. It was unpopular at first, but we did it,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.
At the peak of the pandemic, when the Delta variant raged, Jamaicans were traumatised by the images of persons seeking care being treated on makeshift wards, benches, and chairs, while some were housed on mattresses on the ground in over-capacity hospitals. Public hospitals across the island also began treating emergency cases only amid a crippling wave of infection.
The cost of care drilled a huge hole in many hospital budgets.
“We think it cost more than $20 million per person to treat those who were worst infected,” Bruce said.
“If you look at all the advanced drugs that they get, the amount of oxygen, the equipment, plus we were doing advance and experimental care, harvesting antibodies from plasma. We had to use special machines – thanks to corporate Jamaica, we acquired those machines – then we had to process those and give them to patients who were most vulnerable,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.
“So the process did not come cheap. We used resources that we could have given to heart or cancer patients,” he declared.
The fear factor was real, he noted.
“Right across the world fear was the major concern and certainly here. There was also major concerns about the availability of oxygen during the second surge. We had staff strategically locating cylinders around the hospital, on staircases at various critical points in case there was systemwide shortage. We went very close to that,” Bruce said.
MAINTAINED STOCKS
Working closely with oxygen suppliers allowed the UHWI to maintain stock, although it came perilously close to running out at points.
There was also genuine fear among medics about donning and doffing (putting on and removing personal protective equipment), Bruce said.
Pleased by the strong will of his team, he said they were prepared to use bags to ventilate patients with their hands should it come to that, and he credited those who came out on their days off to help amid the crisis.
“That is something you cannot train. It’s done out of deep love and shows the patient-centric approach taken,” he said.
He said no one could have predicted the scale of the impact on the health system, despite the signs.
Two years ago, in the same Peter Fletcher Lecture Theatre, where this interview was conducted, the hospital’s head of medicine, Professor Michael Boyne, predicted that COVID-19 would be bigger than the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States.
Bruce said the COVID-19 emergency care brought challenges to other patients needing urgent attention for other serious ailments.
“While we had the COVID emergency, many of the families of those who wanted us to manage the COVID patients forgot about the others who did not have COVID, but had just as critical emergencies. So when you had a heart attack, stroke or ruptured appendix, brain haemorrhage or some other emergencies, they still needed care, and so the hospital still had to be dynamic in caring for all,” he explained.
Despite those challenges, beds were reserved for those patients and t he $50 million privatesector field hospital, which was spearheaded by the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, provided 48 additional spaces.
Like Pate-Robinson, Bruce believes that more Jamaicans have been infected with COVID-19 than official numbers reflect.
With more than 90 per cent of admitted patients unvaccinated, both doctors strongly advocated for Jamaicans to take the jab. Doctors have led by example, with about 90 per cent of them vaccinated islandwide.
“If we vaccinate, we are able to extend the healthcare dollar to treating other diseases,” Bruce noted.
Despite the lifting of the mask mandate, the protective gear is still required for staff and visitors at UHWI. Vaccinations are also continuing on site and the testing stations remain open. Trends will inform any future decision on their continuation.