The Tribune

By SIMON

After recently visiting a sick friend at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), a Family Island resident took to TikTok to decry the rundown, dysfunctional state of the country’s major public hospital.

The gentleman was angry.  He deployed a four-letter cuss bomb, chastising Bahamians giddily supporting politicians living in luxury while the facility continues to collapse.

He filmed the video outside of Accident and Emergency (A&E), which we are told is finally fully open after approximately five long years.  Repairs began under the last government. 

It has now taken the full term of the current administration to complete repairs.  A veteran physician who has worked at A&E says the upgrades to the department should have taken around 18 months.

Just about everyone has horror stories about the disgraceful state of the hospital. Many of those treated in the last few years, along with visiting family and friends, are shocked at the conditions one must be endure including leaks, rodents, insufficient beds, rundown wards and rooms.

How could PMH not have a functioning kitchen!?

PMH has always had challenges.  Still, as noted by several former ministers of health and many healthcare professionals, the facility has seen much better days and conditions.

One former health minister said in years past he recommended PMH because of myriad services, including the quality of doctors and nurses, as well as decent, clean wards and the proper functioning of the hospital. 

Today, he says he can longer recommend the hospital because of its poor facilities, unhygienic conditions, and decline in basic services like inadequate surgical and medical supplies. This is a damning indictment of those responsible for PMH, most notably, political leaders.

Soon after he became prime minister in 2021, Philip Davis toured PMH. The Nassau Guardian reported:

“Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis yesterday described conditions at Princess Margaret Hospital as “’dismal’ and ‘bleak’ following his first tour of the facility since taking office.

He claimed: “The healthcare system is a high priority for us.” He promised: “In the immediate term, we will have some short-term solutions to what we see here. It is accepted by all that the state of the hospital is dismal and we need to address it.”

Two years later, in January 2023, the prime minister once again toured the hospital. This journal reported:

“Prime Minister Philip Davis admitted Princess Margaret Hospital is in a state of ‘crisis’ after a tour of the public health facility...

“Speaking to the media afterwards, Mr Davis acknowledged the state of PMH and the government’s commitment to addressing it.”

He noted: “A government has (the) responsibility of ensuring that its citizens have access to public health services in a manner that is dignified, and in surroundings and facilities that accord to best practices. The challenges we see, or we saw this morning, is not new.

“You would have heard during the tour yourselves how long many of the departments and units of the hospital had been in a state of disrepair and not being used.

“So what we see here is not challenges, but truly crisis, and I indicated then that we had a health crisis and part of that crisis is exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, which exposed the infrastructural challenges in crisis we had that require immediate attention - we have the responsibility of providing those services.

“We see patients in corridors on gurneys. We see the tight spaces in which the nurses and doctors are operating and it just heightens the urgency of now that we do what we need to do and do it very swiftly and quickly.”

He added: “We were hearing about it. We were seeing the news about it, but to come and walk and experience it is truly heart wrenching to see what we have today but we will fix it — we are fixing it.

“Hence, we trust that you will see what we’re up against and as an aside I said I see why you brought me because you’ll need money but we will do what we have to, because I take a very serious view.”

Beginning in 2021, Mr. Davis has used words like “crisis”, “bleak”, “dire” and “serious view.”  He said he would act “swiftly, quickly”.  Despite these words and promises PMH has continued to deteriorate.

Fast forward to 2026.  The president of the Consultant Physicians Staff Association, Dr Charelle Lockhart, cried that conditions at PMH were some of the worst she has seen in her career.

Recently, Bahamas Nurses Union president, Muriel Lightbourn, “says Princess Margaret Hospital is in the worst condition she has seen in more than 40 years as a nurse.”

Senior nursing sisters, who have given their lives to treating their fellow Bahamians and overseeing various wards and nursing staff, are depressed and sickened by the state of PMH.

One nursing sister says she can no longer tolerate working under such conditions She is disheartened that PMH has gone backwards in terms of facilities and care.

The failures at PMH are partially a management problem.  Yet, the underlying problem is worse: moral indifference and sloth by the political directorate to care for the needs of the sick and dying, including poorer and vulnerable Bahamians.

Healthcare is a moral priority.  When a government fails to act in a timely and decisive manner it is sign of moral indifference.

The late US Vice President Hubert Humphrey admonished: “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” 

We are failing this basic moral test in healthcare. Even as PMH has been sorely neglected, the current administration promised a new health facility in New Providence, which they have failed to begin over the past four-plus years.

Their proposal is not a transformed or new general hospital.  It is a stand-alone facility with s number of services, that will not address the major issues of adult A&E and ICU nor the shortage of nurses and doctors.

Three governments, including FNM and PLP administrations, proposed the ongoing redevelopment of PMH on its current campus.

They were informed by various studies and experts. The Aga Khan Foundation, a non-profit international development agency with expertise in health care in developing countries, undertook a study of PMH.

The recommendation was to rebuild PMH on its current location over several years, which they advised would be the most cost-effective, efficient, and manageable option. 

Even if one supported a new facility, allowing our main hospital to collapse is a moral disgrace, the responsibility of which is now the government of the day and the prime minister.

Mr. Davis has spoken of inequality.  One of the greatest inequalities in this country is access to reliable, decent healthcare in proper facilities.

There are many dedicated healthcare professionals at PMH for whom the Bahamian people are grateful.  They deserve and the Bahamian people deserve a major hospital that is clean, well-functioning, properly staffed, and adequately supplied, so that they are treated with dignity and respect.

As a senior medical doctor opined last year: “Like a well-functioning human body, an integrated major national hospital is best rather than severing certain organs or limbs from the main body of PMH, and by so doing worsening the better circulation or logistics of health care delivery.”