RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite as­sur­ances from the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty that there are ad­e­quate sup­plies of gauze at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, mem­bers of the pub­lic are deny­ing this is so.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic took to Face­book to re­spond to an SWRHA’s pub­lic no­tice on the is­sue, ti­tled “Pro­vi­sion of Gauze at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, short­ages were iden­ti­fied at SFGH, La Ro­maine Health Cen­tre, Fyz­abad Health Cen­tre and Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

One com­men­ta­tor, Kubair Ram­per­sad, wrote: “Ah say­ing it in big. I have a rel­a­tive there at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for 25 days now and he buy­ing gauze and ban­dages... Last week a rel­a­tive was con­tact­ed and asked to fork out $1,500 for gauze.”

Ram­per­sad claimed nurs­es were not chang­ing the dress­ings and had left a wound­ed 15-year-old to do it.

Myr­i­am Em­manuel-Alexan­der al­so dis­put­ed the re­lease, say­ing: “Well, the Siparia Health Cen­tre had none a few weeks ago be­cause I had to buy and drop off for a friend to get her dress­ing changed.”

Rhea Lee Ross al­so said La Ro­maine Health Cen­tre al­so ex­pe­ri­enced short­ages of gauze.

“In June this year, La Ro­main Health Cen­tre turned away a pa­tient with a wound as they had no gauze and dress­ing to treat the pa­tient. The per­son was ad­vised to head to an­oth­er health cen­tre or A&E at SFGH but they chose to go pri­vate in the in­ter­est of time,” she said.

Gue­vara Chrys­tal said she was vis­it­ing a rel­a­tive re­cent­ly at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and there was no gauze to treat the pa­tient.

“While there, a doc­tor and nurse were lit­er­al­ly on the hunt for gauze, they couldn’t find any, at which point I asked if they were se­ri­ous and yes they were! ... I asked if they need­ed me to bring ... And then by the stroke of luck they found a piece. And then an­oth­er nurse made a list of items to bring for my rel­a­tive be­cause they had short­ages like pam­pers and bed­sheets,” she wrote.

Shre­ka Singh al­so com­ment­ed on the re­lease, say­ing: “There is a short­age in all the RHAs.”

Tri­cia Al­lana claimed that about three months ago, she went to the Fyz­abad Health Cen­tre for treat­ment and dress­ing of a cut.

”To my sur­prise, the nurse who was at­tend­ing to me asked if I brought my gauze. My im­me­di­ate re­sponse was ‘What do you mean if I brought my own gauze… don’t you have? This can­not be a se­ri­ous ques­tion.’ So sure enough, I had to find my way to the near­est phar­ma­cy,” Al­lana wrote.

Oth­ers ques­tioned the au­then­tic­i­ty of the re­lease, say­ing it was a lie.

Peo­ple on the wards al­so ver­i­fied the short­age.

On Mon­day, pa­tients com­plained that they were be­ing asked to pur­chase gauze as it was not avail­able at the clin­ics.

How­ev­er, the SWRHA is­sued a state­ment say­ing: “Present­ly, there is no short­age of gauze for use in de­liv­ery of ser­vices at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“Ad­e­quate sup­plies are in stock and be­ing dis­trib­uted on re­quest to clin­i­cal ar­eas as need­ed.”

The SWRHA al­so said it “con­tin­ues to pro­vide care with com­pas­sion and com­pe­tence and will not com­pro­mise on pa­tient safe­ty.”

Pa­tients who are fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties have been urged to utilise the Cus­tomer Ser­vice Cen­tre at 87-SWRHA (877-9742).