The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Nurses Union president Muriel Lightbourne said the $201m loan secured for constructing a new specialty hospital should instead be directed to urgent gaps across the existing healthcare network, insisting the country cannot adequately staff or manage its current facilities and that the planned hospital will not relieve system-wide overcrowding.

“Building buildings is not going to help us,” she said. “We need to build lives.”

Her comments followed the House of Assembly’s approval of a resolution to borrow $201m from the Export-Import Bank of China to construct a hospital on New Providence Highway.

She said the project will focus largely on maternity and paediatric care while the majority of patients will continue seeking treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital, where they already face overcrowding and long waits.

She said the government could have used the money to renovate PMH, improve clinics nationwide, support underpaid nurses, and invest in community health education programmes. She argued these interventions would do more to ease demand than building a specialised facility.

She said the new Accident & Emergency unit at PMH immediately filled beyond capacity, that elderly patients continue to wait on trolleys for beds, and that the recent extension “has not even helped with the overcrowding.”

“We have our elderly, we have our young people, people with common situations like high blood pressure and diabetes. These are the people who are flooding our hospitals,” she said.

She emphasised staffing shortfalls, saying nurses are leaving the profession daily due to low pay, forcing remaining staff to work “two and three jobs.” She said clinics and hospitals cannot be properly staffed now, questioning how the government expects to staff a new facility.

“We’re not able to staff the hospitals and the clinics we have now. How are we going to staff a new hospital?” she asked.

She underscored the need for consistent public health education, saying people with hypertension are admitted repeatedly because they do not understand or manage their condition. She said caregivers need more training and that increased home visits would help reduce preventable admissions.

“Imagine you’re diagnosed with high blood pressure in January, and by May you’ve had three or four admissions. That tells me we’re not educating our people,” she said.

She said clinics across the country face space shortages and constant service reshuffling, contributing to system-wide dysfunction. She said the overall approach to healthcare lacks clarity and coordination.

“Sometimes I try to figure out what is the plan for our healthcare,” Ms Lightbourne said. “Healthcare is too important for us to be playing with. Let’s make things make sense.”