May Pen Hospital Gets C-Arm Machine

The May Pen Hospital in Clarendon has received a Digital Mobile C-Arm machine worth $10 million, through grant funding from the Japanese government under the Grass-roots Human Security Project.

The machine will enable the orthopaedic team at the hospital to expand the delivery of service to more than 300,000 people in Clarendon and the bordering communities of Southwest St. Catherine and Southeast Manchester.

A C-arm is an imaging scanner intensifier. C-arms have radiographic capabilities, though they are used primarily for fluoroscopic intraoperative imaging during surgical, orthopaedic and emergency-care procedures.

Speaking at the handover ceremony on August 5, Health and Wellness Minister, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, said the Ministry is about to intervene, with the help of external partners, to assist the thousands of Jamaicans who have little or no access to expensive tests such as CT scans.

“Later this month we will provide details of an arrangement that will see us having agreements with external providers where the equipment is not available in public hospitals. What Jamaicans will get is a piece of paper that says go do the tests and return and you won’t have to pay,” he said.

Under the new partnership, Dr. Tufton said patients will be sent to private facilities that offer these tests, at no cost to them. This should address some of the obvious anomalies in the system.

He noted, however, that the move is not meant to eliminate the need to have equipment in public hospitals and that he is currently looking at the state of equipment across the entire public health system.

Dr. Tufton said far too many Jamaicans turn up at public hospitals for CT scans and there is either no machine or it is not working.

For his part, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Japan in Jamaica, Shotoku Habukawa, said that with the C-Arm machine at the hospital, they would no longer need to transfer patients to Mandeville Regional or Kingston Public hospitals for emergency surgery.
Meanwhile, Orthopaedic Consultant at the May Pen Hospital, Dr. Safiya Franklin, expressed gratitude for the machine.

“The C-Arm is an essential part of the contemporary practice of orthopaedic surgery, with its use being standard of care in performing a majority of surgeries. The benefits of its use include reduced morbidity to patients, reduced time loss from work, reduced need for transfer and referral of patients, and a reduction in surgical waiting time for emergency or elective procedures,” the Consultant said.