Black River, St Elizabeth — A happy Marva Christian, director of the Cari-Med Foundation, told her audience that “many, many years ago” she was born in the Black River Hospital.

Now, she said to laughter and applause, was her time to “give back”.

On behalf of Cari-Med Ltd, local representative for several international companies which manufacture medical products, and the Cari-Med Foundation, Christian recently formally presented equipment worth $5 million to the hospital.

She also cut the ribbon to open a small annex to the paediatric ward, previously used as a learning and recreational centre, but which has now been transformed into a secure nursery, a neonatal unit for ailing and premature newborns.

The donated equipment included two incubators, two infant warmers, two phototherapy lights (used in the treatment of neonatal jaundice), and 10 bassinets (miniature hospital beds).

Inevitably, the deaths of 19 premature babies earlier this year in leading Jamaican hospitals, as a result of bacterial infection, weighed on the minds of those at the Black River ceremony.

Against that unmentioned backdrop, medical practitioners explained that the new equipment and neonatal unit will allow the Black River Hospital to care for most of its ailing and premature babies without having to resort to transfers. Previously, they said, far too many had to be transferred long distances to tertiary institutions, including Mandeville Regional, Bustamante Hospital, Cornwall Regional and the University Hospital of the West Indies.

“We are now able to treat 15 to 20 babies (ailing and premature newborns) without having to transfer,” Dr Aggrey Sajabi, paediatrician at Black River Hospital, told the Jamaica Observer.

He emphasised that newborns unable to breathe on their own will still be transferred to more advanced hospitals because of the absence of ventilator systems. Type C hospitals, such as is the Black River Hospital, are not equipped with ventilators, nor is there staff to handle such equipment, Sajabi said.

Christian said the decision to donate to the neonatal unit had come easily for the Cari-Med Foundation.

“It seems unthinkable to me that newborn babies should have to make the journey to another hospital, not for specialist care, but because some basic facility was unavailable,” she said.

Manager of the paediatric ward at Black River Hospital, Sister Erica Myers, told the Observer that the new facility had made life easier for her and her colleagues.

“Now we have better control,” she said, “better infection control, better control of trafficking, better control of everything.”

Myers said she was hoping for other basic facilities that will strengthen services on the paediatric ward, including, at some point, the return of designated space for play and learning.

“I would like to have a play area for the older children, and we need a small library so that when we have children of school age on the ward, they can be helped to continue their education,” she said.