Erica Virtue, Staff Reporter
VIOLENCE is wreaking havoc on the health sector causing a run on hospital space and operating theatre hours, while blood supplies desperately needed for elective surgeries, often go to victims of crime.
It is also costing the country $400 million annually to deal with emergencies which result from violence, Minister of Health, John Junor, said.
The island's largest health facility, the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), said it cancelled one in every three elective surgeries weekly in 2001, and spent 11 per cent of its budget to deal with emergency cases, a majority of which result from violence.
And although not all emergencies required surgeries, violence-related trauma was bleeding the hospital's resources.
Information received from the Ministry of Health, through its public relations office on Friday, indicates that last year, violence-related injuries acc-ounted for 11,800 of the 54,000 accident and emergency cases seen at the hospital. This is 22 per cent of the total cases in the 12-month period.
More than 4,000 or 34 per cent of the 11,800 were admitted.
"A breakdown of the in-juries demonstrates that 59 per cent or 6,994 were violence-related injuries," the information noted.
Mr. Junor said too that elective surgeries that have been pushed back for too long because of the crime-related cases, have themselves become emergencies.
"Trauma is a major factor in hospital cost now. There is money cost and there is the cost to the sector, from the view of affecting your ability to treat other patients," the Minister said.
Attempts to get information from other hospitals were unsuccessful as chief executive officers (CEOs) asked The Sunday Gleaner to speak with matrons. However, most of the matrons said the CEOs were the ones with the information.
But matron Edith Allwood-Anderson at Mandeville Public Hospital said, "Our assistance is limited to the care we provide while they are on the wards. But yes, many are here, but I cannot give you the kind of data you require."
A spokesperson at the University Hospital of the West Indies, said at least 10 per cent of surgical patients annually in the last three years, were there as a result of violence.
The National Blood Trans-fusion Centre has also failed to attract donors because of the violence in the surrounding areas. The violence has also affected staff presence at the Blood Bank.
Dr. Lundi Richards, who heads the bank admitted that there was a fear factor involved in the current blood shortage crisis.
