Local news headlines are reporting that the regional hospital on the western end of the island is having difficulties with the decades old ventilation system, forcing most of its services to be badly curtailed. As the only Type A hospital outside of the KSAC its services are integral to regional health stability. Not just the most critical patients but also the day to day management of stable patients depend on this hospital’s functions.

Which is perhaps why in an effort to avoid national panic, the Government (through the media) has downplayed the potentially longstanding and severe effects of the situation. Ventilation issues are the problem, they quip, and point to engineers assessing the situation, the plans in place to fix it. Never mind that every day brings the shut down or relocation of some critical department. Never mind that daily staff and patients are exposed to unknown airborne chemicals with unforeseeable effects to their physical health.

The problem as Dr. Christopher Tufton rightly pointed out is primarily one of neglect. For decades the ventilation at CRH has not been working and none of our successive governments has bothered to fix it. So when a simple problem of airborne irritants occurs there was no ventilation  system in place to redirect the fumes. And when they did turn the system on the problem only worsened. (This is a classic example of sick building syndrome).

Internationally speaking, workplace hazards are problems ripe for litigation. It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that the employee is not placed at unnecessary risk in carrying out his or her duties (the so-called ‘due diligence‘). Where unavoidable this risk should be carefully calculated.

Human lives are at stake.

Healthcare workers are put at risk in so many other ways: needle-stick injuries, violent patients, contamination with blood or other bodily fluids, the constant exposure to illness. We mitigate these risks as best as we can, accepting them as part and parcel of our call to service. But the continued pressure to work in an environment with unidentified and potentially catastrophic risk is, I think, too much to ask. What the media (and therefore the public) have yet to fully realize is that human lives are at stake: patients, medical and non-medical staff, siblings, spouses, parents, children.

I don’t envy the Health Minister’s seat right now, backed into a corner with IMF restraints and the demands of an ailing health sector. And just as you said, Dr. Tufton, there is no quick fix. But the people working and convalescing in this contaminated institution cannot be left to languish while the situation is slowly rectified. Decisive action is needed if lives are to be saved. Come Dr. Tufton, do sumn before sumn do wi.