The Tribune

BY DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

A concerned resident has expressed frustration over the long wait time and delays at the Rand Memorial Hospital before patients are seen by a doctor.

The delays are so long in a video post on social media, a Grand Bahama woman claimed she and others had to assist a pregnant woman who gave birth to a baby after waiting outside to be seen by a doctor.

“It made me cry to know where that baby born in the middle of the floor,” the woman claimed in a video posted on facebook.

According to the woman, the pregnant woman and other patients were made to wait outside the hospital.

The woman said she took her mother who experiencing breathing complications to the Rand around 7pm.

Her mother was screened and told to wait in the vehicle.

“After two to three hours… my mother started having complications again. She started holding her chest, saying she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe.”

The woman said someone came out with a wheel chair and wheeled her mother to the front door, but did not take her inside.

She said she was told the doctors were busy.

The woman said a male patient with injuries also came to hospital seeking assistance.

“His finger was hanging off and they…wrap couple pieces of gauze around it and say they dealing with a baby first,” she said.

The woman claimed a pregnant woman in labour also came to the hospital.

She said the woman appeared to be in a lot of pain.

She said she sanitized her hand and started to comfort the woman by rubbing her down and fanning her because she was sweating.

“We were sitting outside and we were cold, but she was sweating,” the woman recalled. Me and a next lady we timed the contractions. She said, ‘the baby coming’ and I said, ‘don’t push.’ “

“Me and two ladies had to throw our hands around her and the baby was out. We helped deliver the baby right there in the middle of the hallway,” the woman claimed.

“They have to do better with this system.

“We have babies sitting up out here in the cold.

“We were sitting outside because there is no place to sit.

“When they screen you, you have to sit outside. If it is rain… you getting wet - this ain’t a place for nobody to be.

“That lady deliver her baby walking inside the Emergency Room door. We had to grab the blanket and throw her sweater around her.

“And it is hurtful.”

The woman claimed hospital personnel came running to assist only after the woman had already given birth.

“The baby was in the woman pants crying, she said.

“I am so angry right now, but I am happy because it is a healthy baby girl.”

The woman called for improvement in hospital.

The Tribune understands that hospital officials were aware of the video post. However, the hospital administrator did not return our call up to press time.