Work on New Block at Mandeville Hospital to Begin December

Patients visiting the Mandeville Regional Hospital in Manchester will soon benefit from improvement in the services offered at the facility.
On a tour of the hospital on Thursday (October 29), Minister of Health, Hon. Rudyard Spencer, informed that work will begin in December, on the construction of a new block at the facility.
The project, he said, will increase the number of bed spaces and provide improved conditions for patients and hospital staff.
“You are crippled because you are woefully short of bed space. Block J will start before the end of December,” he assured, noting that he is committed to see the project through to its completion.
Mr. Spencer informed that matters relating to the bid for the project, which was first proposed in 2003, have been settled, and a contractor has been selected. He said that the final step is for the matter to go before the National Contracts Commission (NCC) and the Cabinet.
A Type B facility, Mandeville Regional Hospital serves approximately 150,000 residents in Manchester and treats patients transferred from the nearby Percy Junor Hospital; May Pen and Lionel Town hospitals in Clarendon; the Black River Hospital in St. Elizabeth, as well as cases from the primary health care facilities. It has a bed capacity of 220 with a 100 per cent occupancy level.
Turning to other matters, Minister Spencer said he is prepared to identify funding to complete work on the setting up of a dialysis centre at the hospital.
“The project started and the project has stopped. I am committed, as soon as you are able to tell me exactly what is required, I am prepared to put the funding in. Dialysis service is important to the region. You do not need to convince me that we need to have renal dialysis services in Mandeville as quickly as possible,” he stated.
In the meantime, the Minister informed that the morgue at the hospital is working efficiently. “The report I have is that the morgue is working better, it is more efficient and they are able to account for any and everything that takes place in the morgue,” he said.
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Senator the Hon. Aundre Franklin; Permanent Secretary, Dr. Jean Dixon; Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sheila Campbell Forrester; and Chief Nursing Officer, Dr. Leila McWhinney Dehaney, accompanied the Minister on the tour, which was part of an island-wide visit to health facilities.
The team from the Ministry has already visited the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, St. James; and the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital in Westmoreland.