The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Staff Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

A MAN criticised the Public Hospital Authority for closing the Rand Memorial Hospital’s blood bank on weekends, saying his father desperately needed blood when he died two days after having elective surgery on December 9, 2022.

Mark Da Cunha said that several donors were waiting to attend to donate blood. He said that if lab workers were on call, they should have shown up when requested on Saturday, but they did not.

He said: “Many pints of blood from donors were ready and waiting to come in within the hour that Saturday.”

His father died in the hospital on December 11, never receiving the blood transfusion.

“As my father held on for life, the attending nurse tried to comfort me by saying though they had no blood to give my father, they could give him plasma (the liquid portion of the blood sans the life-giving oxygen-carrying red blood cells),” Mr Da Cunha told The Tribune.

Mr Da Cunha said his family found donors after being told their father’s blood type was unavailable at the blood bank.

He said they were told the blood bank would only be open half-day on Saturday and would reopen fully on Monday.

When contacted for a response, the PHA told The Tribune a phlebotomist is always on call for emergencies.

The authority said the blood bank reported having an adequate blood supply for the hospital, but voluntary donors are needed to maintain the supply.

“Any emergency case requiring the services of our blood bank outside of our standard operating hours will action an urgent call for blood donations for as many donors as possible as one pint of blood can save up to three lives,” the PHA said in a statement.

The authority said the Rand Memorial Hospital blood bank’s operating hours for the public are Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm.

“If the PHA had an ‘on-call’ policy, the doctors and nurses didn’t know about it,” Mr Da Cunha countered.

“Perhaps this policy is a best-kept secret, only to be revealed in statements to the press or to be discussed by the administrative staff in the Rand Hospital’s newly built cafeteria, as suffering Grand Bahamians to this day continue to wait in hallways due to the Rand’s lack of hospital beds.”

“The PHA’s statement does not define what they consider to be ‘on call.’ ‘On call’ means that when you receive a call for an emergency, you come in immediately, not Monday morning during regular office hours or the next afternoon, or when convenience suits you. A patient whose oxygen saturation is low because of a lack of blood in a critical condition qualifies as an emergency.”

“If the PHA had Rand blood lab workers ‘on call’, the first one to be contacted should have responded, as should have the second.”

He said friends and strangers to his father were ready to help, and that RMH nurses and doctors were ready to deliver blood to him.