The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I am writing to thank The Tribune for publishing my letter regarding the “Blood bank policy is a failure” (August 25, 2023). It speaks volumes about The Tribune’s dedication to journalism as a beacon of light for Bahamians where there otherwise would be darkness.

I would like to respond to the Bahama Government’s Public Hospital Authority’s (PHA) unsigned statement that followed my letter, that “a phlebotomist is always on call for emergencies”.

This statement does not reflect reality.

I know this because, on a December 10, 2022, Saturday afternoon, the attending physician told me that a Bahamian patient in critical condition in the PHA-administered Rand Hospital on Grand Bahama Island, needed more blood to recover. That patient, who had just undergone elective surgery the day before, was my father.

As I describe in my letter “Blood bank policy is a failure”, phone calls were made by Rand lab attendants to blood bank workers. The first two calls to those whom the PHA claims are “on call” were not answered. Finally, a third call was answered. The blood bank worker said they would come in to take the blood on Monday when the lab opened! After some coaxing, they said they would come in the next day on Sunday afternoon!

“Why can’t they come today? He’s in critical condition. He needs it now.” The lab attendant would not budge. At that point I realised I was not dealing with empathetic, fellow human beings, but rule-following, government bureaucrats. It was a vivid illustration of the difference between an institution run as a private business paid for satisfying customers, and a government bureaucracy paid in taxes forcibly extracted from citizens regardless of their performance.

I told my father’s attending physician and nurses what the lab attendant told me. Not one of them said that it is PHA policy that “a phlebotomist is always on call for emergencies”. Not one. If the PHA had an “on-call” policy, the doctors and nurses didn’t know about it. 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 unsigned PHA statement does not define what they consider to be “on call,” so let me help them: “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. Doctors “on call” have buzzers that beep when they are on call. What do PHA phlebotomists “on call” have? Smoke signals?

The PHA’s response that “Any emergency case requiring the services of our blood bank outside of standard operating hours will action an urgent call…” and that “…one pint of blood can save up to three lives” is remarkably obtuse. Many pints of blood from donors were ready and waiting to come in within the hour that Saturday. Some of them were friends, some Bahamians, some foreigners, some of them strangers to my father. The nurses and doctors at the Rand Hospital were ready and waiting to deliver the blood. The broken wrench in the equation was the Bahamas government’s Public Hospital Authority bureaucracy.

That an unpaid private stranger unknown to the recipient could adjust their Saturday afternoon/evening schedule to donate blood immediately when called, and a paid public servant allegedly “always on call for emergencies” could not adjust their schedule to process that blood, speaks volumes about the government-run PHA’s actual policies, priorities, and practices, as opposed to their Alice in Wonderland statements to the press that are entirely divorced from reality.

As my father held on for life, the attending nurse tried to comfort me by saying that although 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). This is what they gave him.

My father died the next day on Sunday morning — waiting for the Bahamas government’s PHA “on call” employee who did not come when called.

MARK Da CUNHA

Freeport, Bahamas

October 17, 2023