WESTERN BUREAU – The island’s major medical facilities sent home patients who were able to return home, as they joined the rest of the island in preparing for Hurricane Ivan on Thursday.

Senior medical officer of health at the KPH Dr Patrick Bhoorasingh told the Observer that the hospital was only seeing emergency cases and had started sending home persons who were not critically ill.

“We discharged them and asked the relatives to pick them up. They are not all emergency cases, some of them were admitted for what we called elective procedures – meaning that they were not in danger of dying – they were waiting for surgery, for example,” Bhoorasingh told the Observer.

However, some patients who are medically able to be discharged may still have to remain in the medical facility if relatives who live outside of Kingston are unable to get to KPH in time.

“We started this morning at 400 patients and we do not have a final figure yet how many would be left behind,” Dr Bhoorasingh said on Thursday.

CEO for the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay Everton Anderson was also unable to say how many patients remained at that facility where they have also discharged a number of clients.

Unlike the KPH, Anderson said there was not much of a logistical problem for CRH patients because most of them were from St James.

Meanwhile, administrator at the Lucea Hospital Maureen Winstanley said many of the facility’s patients who were not critically ill had been picked up by their relatives.

“We are trying to keep to a minimum those persons who must stay,” Winstanley noted. “We are trying to ensure that we have adequate medication and basic emergency supplies. We have a generator and we have fuel – I am not a technical person so I don’t have the details (of how long the supplies would last) but what I know is if it (Ivan) should come now, we would not be totally out of electricity,” Winstanley told the Observer.

She added that there was an adequate supply of water, which would last a few days after the hurricane.

Like the KPH and CRH, Falmouth Hospital has sent home non-critical patients, and preparations for the storm were well under way.

“We have got that under control – we have got tanks and we have got stand-by generators. We’ll house patients at the Holland High Schools in Martha Brae. They have prepared there for the hospital or the infirmary patients if we have to evacuate.”