Shal­iza Has­sanali

Throngs of par­ents yes­ter­day wait­ed for hours at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) seek­ing at­ten­tion for chil­dren sus­pect­ed of hav­ing dengue fever. Lin­ing the cor­ri­dor and the Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment of the hos­pi­tal with cry­ing and ir­ri­ta­ble chil­dren, were par­ents who com­plained bit­ter­ly of the slow pace at which health­care was be­ing ad­min­is­tered. Fa­ther of three, Er­ic Mar­tin of Red Hill, Mor­vant, ex­pressed out­rage at the length of time he had to wait for treat­ment for his one-year-old son Der­rick Mar­tin, who suf­fered a high fever and had been cry­ing un­con­trol­lably since Fri­day. Be­liev­ing that his son was a dengue case, Mar­tin went to the hos­pi­tal around 10 am but up to 2 pm, he claimed, no doc­tor had seen his son.

Ly­ing in the lap of her moth­er, eight-year-old Fi­o­la Pin­to, of Blan­chisseuse itched. Cov­ered in a dis­coloured rash, a symp­tom of dengue fever, Fi­o­la's moth­er Ear­la Pin­to said her pa­tience was run­ning thin since she had been wait­ing over two hours to be at­tend­ed to. A source at the hos­pi­tal said staff had to split an adult ward on Fri­day to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing num­ber of chil­dren sus­pect­ed of hav­ing dengue. The source said by yes­ter­day, the makeshift ward was filled to ca­pac­i­ty with nurs­es from oth­er pub­lic hos­pi­tals be­ing called out to han­dle the in­flux of chil­dren show­ing up for med­ical at­ten­tion. Some nurs­es at the pae­di­atric hos­pi­tal who were sched­uled to go off du­ty at 3 pm, left the hos­pi­tal af­ter 10 pm on Fri­day be­cause of the vol­ume of pa­tients.

Mean­while, clin­i­cal di­rec­tor at the EWM­SC of the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment Dr Helmer Hilwig ad­mit­ted that five sus­pect­ed adult pa­tients were treat­ed yes­ter­day, while three were treat­ed on Fri­day. For the week, Hilwig said rough­ly 15 pa­tients were treat­ed, with one male be­ing ad­mit­ted on Fri­day for ob­ser­va­tion. "For the time be­ing it's very man­age­able," Hilwig said. He urged pa­tients sus­pect­ed of hav­ing dengue to have their blood count checked. Hilwig said be­tween Ju­ly and Au­gust cas­es start­ed com­ing in. By Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber cas­es would in­crease to 30 to 40 per day, with fig­ures de­clin­ing in De­cem­ber.