SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine – Spanish Town philanthropist Ernest Hoo last week donated a $20-million haemodialysis centre to the Spanish Town hospital equipped with seven state-of-the-art dialysis machines.

Named the Katie Hoo Haemodialysis Centre in memory of Hoo’s mother who passed away at the hospital in 1965 under adverse circumstances, the centre at Spanish Town became the 11th such in Jamaica.

However, despite this generous gift the hospital which was scheduled to begin dialysing last Thursday is unable to use the machines because of the quality of the water in St Catherine.

The hospital chief executive officer David Dobson, told guests attending the handing- over ceremony that during installation of the dialysis equipment it was discovered that the water was not soft enough for use in the machines. Another machine, a water softener, was therefore needed before the units could function.

Hoo, a former hospital board chairman and a 30-year hospital benefactor, who also won the governor general’s achievement award last year for his contribution, was disappointed that the machine was not immediately available for use. However, he had ordered the $250,000 water softener from the United States and said it would be delivered this week.

Explaining the water problem, chief St Catherine public health inspector Anthony Thomas said that the parish has extensive limestone deposits and the water picks up calcium chloride, which becomes dissolved solids and presents hard water.

“These calcium chloride deposits will pose a major challenge in relation to the haemodialysis, (it) will clog the dialysis machines and cause malfunction, which will be detrimental to the patients. The solution, therefore, is to move these deposits before the water is utilised in the treatment process for patients,” Thomas explained.

Meanwhile, senior medical officer Dr Paul Brown said 900 new cases of end-stage renal failure are being seen annually. This, he explained, poses a major challenge to the 10 dialysis centres island-wide which accounts for treating fewer than 400 persons annually with only between 50 and 60 machines to dialyse patients.

“Simply put, there are not enough dialysis machines available island-wide to satisfy this great demand,” Brown said.