KEINO Ward has sickle cell anaemia and has been in and out of hospitals for the past 30 years; but the 31-year-old said she is yet to recover from the trauma of being placed on a gurney with blood from its previous occupants.

The incident occurred more than two weeks ago, when she visited the Mandeville Regional Hospital in Manchester.

The Mandeville resident was diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia at 11-months old. The disease results from mutation of red blood cells which assume the characteristic sickle shape. These sharp-end red cells stack up in narrow blood vessels preventing oxygen reaching vital organs, sometimes with fatal results.

‘Sicklers’, or those afflicted by sickle cell anaemia, like Ward, are prone to crisis — characterised by acute, crippling pain and fever. On the morning of September 23, Ward went into crisis and was taken by her father to the Accident and Emergency Unit at the hospital where a porter brought over a stretcher so she could be wheeled inside the building.

“Before I was lifted onto it, observing the hospital issued paper towel covering on the mattress, I instructed my father to cover it with my own linen. Immediately when I was placed on the stretcher I began to smell a raw odour,” recounted Ward in a letter she wrote to the hospital’s administrator and copied to the Sunday Observer.

Ward, who, at the time, was experiencing severe pain and had difficulty breathing, was placed in the observation section and was given a priority three ranking. The hospital ranks patients from one to four according to priority, with rank three meaning that the patient’s case is not urgent.

“While the registration process was being completed by the aid of hospital admin staff, I continued to smell the prevailing stench, and by an investigation of the immediate surroundings, my father — upon his return — my cousin and I saw that there was fresh blood on the stretcher,” she said, noting that the blood was seen on the railing.”

After her father pointed out the situation to a nurse and efforts to source other available beds proved unsuccessful, Ward said the porter went for a bucket of soap and water which was used to clean the railing as she lay on the bed.

“I, along with my bed linen, was being splashed with the liquid from his bucket. With one application of fluid, the porter was done,” said Ward.

“At this point we had no choice for a change or exchange and had to use the stretcher that was provided. The awful stench had now become even more pronounced after all that. I continued to smell this raw odour coming from somewhere I could not identify,” she said.

About 9:30 am, Ward said she was finally seen by a doctor who began preparing her for intravenous treatment and by midday the pain began to subside, although her breathing was still irregular.

When her parents visited her again in the afternoon, Ward said she sought her mother’s help in using her bedpan, however, in the process of removing it, she said there was some spillage. It was while taking off the bed linen, she realised there was blood on the fitted sheet.

“We were still unaware of the origin of this blood. We saw that the black leatherette surface (of the gurney) had hundreds of small cracks in the middle of the mattress, and it was not obvious that that was where the blood was coming from. So the bed was re-dressed with fresh bed sheets of our own,” the sickle cell anaemia patient said.

At about four in the evening, Ward said she was still contending with her resurging pain and the foul odour — which, despite her efforts to sanitise the mattress with her scented antibacterial wipes — was still repugnant. She said she was told by a doctor on duty that she would not be able to get any more pain medication for another six hours since she had already been given some earlier in the day.

Frustrated at not being able to receive more effective pain management, Ward said she decided to leave and sought her mother’s assistance in getting her ready to exit the hospital at around eight o’clock that evening.

“My mother came to my assistance and we began to remove my bed linen [and] I began to feel on my skin that there was something soaking into my clothes,” she said.

“When we removed the linen, I had come to the shocking observation that fresh blood had soaked through my bed sheets and the very clothes I was wearing. As mentioned before, we were unaware that the black leatherette surface of the mattress was the source of the seepage of blood unto my clothes. This was not my blood, as I had no wounds and I was neither haemorrhaging nor having a menstrual cycle,” a horrified Ward recounted.

The shock led her to vocalise her disdain, but she said despite making a scene, none of the hospital staff came over to apologise.

Ward, who has become an advocate for those living with sickle cell anaemia in Mandeville, said the latest incident has forced her to come out and lobby for better treatment for patients seeking help in local hospitals. She said while there are good doctors and nurses who go beyond the call of duty, there are others who give the profession a bad reputation because of their scant disregard for those placed under their care.

“You should have compassion that even if it is one person working, you are going to do the best of your ability; you are going to try and make sure that nobody dies under your hands,” she said.

When contacted, chief executive officer of the Mandeville Regional Hospital, Alwyn Miller, said he has since met with Ward’s parents to discuss what he considers an unfortunate situation.

“We would not have put her on a bed that is messed up with blood and any other secretion,” insisted Miller.

He said he himself had checked up on Ward — who the hospital has been treating for the past 30 years — and her family, shortly after five the afternoon she was admitted, and was told about the blood on the railing of the stretcher. Her father explained it had been wiped off and he assumed that everything else was okay, since there weren’t any other complaints then.

Miller believes the urine spilled from the bedpan had seeped through the cracks of the plastic covering on the mattress and mixed with blood that might have been hiding below the surface.

“From our investigation, there was no blood on the stretcher that the patient was placed on,” he said. “We try to take the best of care that these things don’t happen and it is an unfortunate oversight,” the CEO admitted.

Aside from issuing a formal letter informing Ward of how she can go about seeking redress, and inviting her to come in to have her blood tested as a precautionary measure against any disease she may have contracted from the bloody gurney, Miller said they have also started sourcing new mattresses for the stretchers used by the hospital.

“We have decided that we are going to go to the extent of removing every mattress that is cracked,” he said.

Miller said they would be getting eight new mattresses to replace those used on the stretchers in the Accident and Emergency Unit in the next two weeks. He also noted that the hospital usually goes through over 200 mattresses over a six-month period.

He added that the hospital’s customer service department is trying to improve its patient relations and it is for this reason that he makes his contact numbers available to some patients, including Ward, who has called him in the past. He said hospital administrators are also placed strategically throughout the facility to ensure that proper patient care is being delivered and all grouses are being handled as they arise.

“Mandeville has had its challenges, but we are trying to resolve the issues,” said Miller, who has been the CEO for the past two years.

In coming forward with her story, Ward said it was not her intention to bash the hospital which has been her “home away from home for the past thirty years”. Still, she said she couldn’t accept negligence which is what she believes her recent ordeal amounts to.

“At the end of the day it can happen to anyone, and we cannot tolerate it as a country, as a body of people, humanly, we must not tolerate these things,” she insisted.

“This that just happened has made be so scared, I’m telling you the honest truth. It has made me so scared to even go back for treatment,” said a still-distraught Ward.