Joseph Cunningham, Gleaner Writer 
From left, Professor Everard Barton, consultant nephrologist at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI); Kathy Hower, executive director of Global Links in the United States; Blossom Laidlaw, former public relations and communications manager at Jamalco, and Eric Hall, electronics engineer at UHWI, discuss the features of 19 dialysis machines donated by Jamalco to improve kidney dialysis services at the hospital. – Contributed Photo
The renal unit of the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) now has 19 additional dialysis machines. The machines were donated by Jamalco, one of the country's bauxite/ alumina companies.
The cost of the machines US$46,000 was funded by the Alcoa Foundation, operated by Jamalco's parent company, Alcoa.
This brings to 34 the number of dialysis machines now available at the UHWI, a significant improvement, according to Professor Everard Barton, the hospital's consultant nephrologist.
SEVERE BACKLOG
"We only had 15 full-time machines to dialyse many patients. Consequently, there was a severe backlog of renal patients," explained a grateful Professor Barton, specialist in kidney diseases, kidney transplantation, and dialysis therapy.
With such a shortage of machines, malfunctions often delayed the four-hour dialysis treatments from afternoon to midnight, said Prof. Barton.
The Jamalco donation came about after Blossom Laidlaw, the recently retired Jamalco public relations and communications manager, spotted a letter published in a newspaper which lamented the shortage of machines at the hospital.
Mrs. Laidlaw informed the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Alcoa Foundation, and through the international philanthropic organisation Global Link, they were able to buy the machines at subsidised prices, she explained.
FACT BOX
A study conducted by doctors at six hospitals during the period July 1998 to December 1999 revealed that 60.8 per cent of Jamaicans suffer from chronic hypertension or high blood pressure.
This can gradually destroy the kidneys, making it hard to urinate and necessitating dialysis.
Dialysis is the process of cleaning waste from the blood artificially.
