Dear Editor,

“Happy New Year!” I greet the young man mumbling to himself outside the male medical ward of one of Jamaica’s prominent hospitals. He returns the greeting. “Year”, he says to me, but not really to me, or anyone at all.

He has an intellectual disability, but no one is alarmed by his presence roaming the corridors of this sanatorium. It is his home, after all, and I, the doctor, only work here. It has been whispered that he has been here for at least the last two years. It is 1:24 am on the first day of January 2026, and he is only one of many patients abandoned in Jamaican hospitals by family members and caregivers.

Social cases they are called, from adolescents to the elderly, usually from lower socio-economic backgrounds, many times suffering from severe cognitive, psychiatric, or physical disabilities that make them a burden to their families back home. It usually begins the same way: A patient is admitted to the hospital accompanied by a relative or caregiver. The relatives assure the administrative staff that the contact information is valid, and the patient is given over to the care of the nurses and doctors for treatment of their varied ailments.

The good news comes from the consultants: The patient is fit for home, and not a moment too soon, as there are four times the number of patients waiting for a bed space on admission. Calls go out to relatives, but, alas, they remain unanswered. Visitors who come by insist they are only neighbours and cannot take responsibility for the patient. Others berate the doctors who dare to suggest that the bed is needed for other patients. Days pass, then weeks, and before you know it, there is a permanent fixture in your ward, blameless in their current predicament, yet through their continued presence in the hospital, they prevent countless others from receiving the beds, time, and resources of the medical staff.

Holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Day see cases like these increase, as some Jamaican families choose to celebrate the end of another year without an extra mouth to feed.

Medical social workers many times use their own resources to try to supply some of the personal needs of the patients that the hospital does not provide: incontinence pads, diapers, toiletries, to ensure that abandoned patients can still retain their dignity as they are unofficially housed in the hospitals. Doctors dip into their pockets to pay for investigations and even to send some stranded patients home. Nurses field questions from sad souls asking, “Yuh can try call mi daughter again?” All the while knowing that the family has no intention to return for pickup.

In the Accident and Emergency Department, a medical officer tries to calmly explain in the face of loud Jamaican indignance why yet another severely ill patient has to sit upright in an uncomfortable wheelchair for the second day in a row and has not yet been transferred to the ward: An abandoned patient has your bed.

Solutions are offered left and right. The callous say, “Throw them out! The hospital is not a nursing home!”, but that goes in direct contradiction to the oath, “Do no harm.” Others believe the police must get involved, but with no proper contact details or valid addresses, where would the officers go to make arrests?

Some say bringing back fees to the public health system would deter selfish relatives from even thinking about abandoning their charges, but that would only deter Jamaica’s most vulnerable from seeking medical care. This physician has no answer. I do what all medical, nursing, and administrative staff across Jamaica, land we love, do: our best, despite the circumstances.

Till a suitable solution comes, while their families and guardians continue to abuse the benevolence of the health system, patients will continue to call Jamaica’s already-flailing health institutions “home sweet home”.

Olivia Valentine

jamexican484@gmail.com