Shoreline shift

The future, long-term viability and resilience of government-operated facilities situated near the shoreline in Jamaica are now under scrutiny following severe devastation inflicted on several as a result of the passage of Hurricane Melissa on October 28. After the Category 5 storm, many such facilities were left operating well below capacity.

Health facilities in the parishes devastated by the hurricane are among those under consideration, says Dr Elon Thompson, the junior minister in the Ministry of Health & Wellness, who noted that their locations are no longer sustainable given climate change, the resultant severe hurricanes and storm surges and the damage they cause.

Thompson was tasked with producing a report on the status of operating theatres in parishes. Multiple recommendations, which he opted not to discuss when he spoke with The Gleaner, are now before Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton. He said, however, that during the course of the investigation it was clear that the future of all public facilities, including hospitals near the shoreline, will have to be considered in the long term.

A former Jamaica Medical Doctors Association president, Thompson said the hospitals include Black River, Falmouth, Noel Holmes, Savanna-la-Mar, and Cornwall Regional, and include 12 operating theatres. Cornwall Regional and Falmouth hospitals currently share two theatres after the health ministry signed off on an agreement following the hurricane, and have three on-site.

“So, essentially what it required was an assessment to be done of the institutions with regard to implications of surgery and operating theatre services. A theatre is not just walls. It’s really staff, equipment, the structure is very important and the supporting areas for operating theatres, such as the sterilising department. This is the department that sends all the sterilised equipment, for example sterilised linen, to the operating theatre for use,” he told The Gleaner.

Thompson said personnel are already in place at most institutions.

FUTURE PLANS

“And what you do notice now is the [facilities] that are on the shoreline, the Noel Holmes, the Falmouth Hospital, and the Black River Hospital, basically on the shoreline, they would have been more extensively damaged. And, we are therefore going to have a short-, medium- and a long-term plan. You have to look at the positioning of these institutions going forward to see if it is that we would definitely have to do some reworking of where these places are institutions. We can’t continue with the institutions on the shoreline, because we are unable to provide the amount of resilience based on what we saw with Hurricane Melissa for the structure,” Thompson explained.

Continuing, he said: “So, the Government is taking a look at that as a medium- to long-term plan. The minister is looking into it. I can’t really tell you anything about it, because it has been filed but I am not sure the minister has had time to digest it and say what his thoughts are on it.”

Speaking in the Senate last week Friday, Thompson said he worked post hurricane, and that there were times when the scale of the devastation was overwhelming.

“There were moments when the scale of the damage felt overwhelming. As someone trained in urological surgery and deeply familiar with theatre operations, I assisted with assessing the damage, evaluating safety, checking equipment integrity, and determining readiness for reactivation. These assessments were not merely technical. They were emotional, urgent, and deeply human, because every repaired bed and every restored machine brought us one step closer to saving lives again.

“Operating theatres are not simply rooms. They are sanctuaries. They are the spaces where a mother prays as her child is wheeled inside, where fathers pace hallways with trembling hands, where surgeons fight for every heartbeat. Restoring these theatres is not just infrastructure work. It is restoring hope and preserving the capacity of our nation to save its people,” Thompson said as he debated amendments to the Financial and Audit Act to suspend the fiscal rules and allow the Government to spend more.

Restoration will take heavy funding from many sources.

“I can say that it will require funding and we are looking at different options for funding now, and there are different places from which funding can come. Of course, Government can provide funding and there are other bodies such as the Pan American Health Organization, and World Health Organization. They can give support in terms of funding as well. And non-governmental organisations can also support.

PRIORITY

“So, we have areas that we are going to look at now to rapidly see how we can get things into place. The most important thing right now is to get infrastructure up because you can’t put equipment into a place that infrastructure is not proper. So, right now the priority is to get the infrastructure in place so that we can fill the gaps with equipment and other supporting areas,” he said.

He explained the degrees of damage.

“So they were, varying degrees of damage. Some more extensively than others. Thankfully, because of the resilience of the some of the supporting groups that would have come in to assist us, groups like Doctors Without Borders comes to mind because they assisted significantly, with some of the repairs to even Cornwall Regional Hospital with the roof and stuff. So they would have had some functionality restored to them, to be able to actually do emergencies on-site there. But there was extensive damage,” he explained.

“We started to actually look at it already. The ministry does understand that concept, that it is on the radar in term of planning. But I want to be very clear that we are not moving any hospital tomorrow or any time soon, but it must be part of the discussions,” Thompson said.

Speaking in the Senate, Thompson said he saw first-hand the courage of health workers who operated under trying circumstances post hurricane.

“My role, modest as it may have been, placed me directly in the heart of the devastation. I stepped into theatres where water stained the walls, where essential equipment sat silent, where the pulse of life-saving activity had been interrupted by the storm. For a moment, the stillness felt heavy,” he said during arguments to discuss the amendments to the Financial and Audit Act.

He said nurses whose own homes were flooded; technicians who had lost personal belongings; porters who had walked through debris simply to report for duty, all stood beside him in damaged theatres, “not with despair, but with determination. Their courage lit those rooms brighter than any surgical lamp could”.

The Gleaner also understands that the medium- and long-term plans could include police stations, infirmaries, and other such facilities.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com