Jamaicans Urged To Avoid Non-Emergency Hospital Visits

As hospitals see an increase in coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, Health and Wellness Minister, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, is urging Jamaicans not to visit these facilities at this time, unless absolutely necessary.

He is advising patients with non-emergency conditions to, instead, visit their nearest health centre.

“If you don’t need to go to a hospital, please do not. At this point in time, unless you think it is absolutely necessary, visit maybe your health centre, or make a call to your doctor. Don’t go, because what you will be doing, unless you think you absolutely need to, is further clogging the system and pulling attention of the public health practitioners away from the cases that are more severe,” he pointed out.

The Minister, who was speaking at the virtual COVID Conversations press briefing on Tuesday (February 23), said that there is “a general uptick in hospitalisations across the board – even for non-COVID patients – and so in the general wards you are seeing more persons suffering from various respiratory ailments, which is adding to the stress in the system”.

He noted that those who do go to public health institutions are likely to experience longer than usual wait times.

“So patience is going to be important, and I understand the stress and the emotions attached with sickness… it is not deliberate; it is because of the particular situation,” he said.

He noted, as well, that a number of institutions have had to postpone elective surgeries “because that capacity is required to deal with the emergency cases around COVID as well as other emergency cases”.

Dr. Tufton assured that the “very firm” policy of the Government is not to turn away anyone in need of healthcare, based on overcrowding, lack of beds or shortage of doctors.

He informed that every hospital has been asked to put temporary provisions in place, whether tents or chairs, to ensure that everyone turning up at the facility is triaged.

He said that the normal protocols around the possibility of transfers to other institutions must be followed or any other recommendation that fits the clinical profile of the patient.