The Gore Family Foundation (GFF) in collaboration with Mrs. Neadene Tufton formed a KPH Support Team in September and the initiative has already reaped rewards with the timely arrival and delivery of a laparoscopy machine, which was ‘stranded’ in Barbados, having been donated to KPH by Arbutus Medical Inc. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Arbutus Medical works with surgeons around the world to develop safe, affordable and appropriate medical equipment for low-resource environments. The Company works primarily to develop tools for countries where resources are limited and robust medical equipment is needed.
The newly arrived equipment allows for more advanced laparoscopic surgery by enabling the surgeon to see the internal organs more clearly during laparoscopy and therefore, affords KPH the capacity to do more advanced procedures with a laparoscopic approach as opposed to using traditional ‘open’ techniques.

Laparoscopy benefits the patients, the hospital and the country. For patients, it means less pain after surgery and speeds recovery as their ‘post-op’ stay is greatly reduced. For KPH, it frees much needed beds – currently used for post-op care – whilst decreasing a patient’s bill, as less post-surgery medication is required. For Jamaica, if the hospital can get their patients back to work sooner, so much the better!

The arrival of the shipment was indeed timely as KPH hosted the Caribbean Society of Endo-laparoscpoic Surgeons (CaSES) for KPH’s inaugural MIS symposium on Friday November 18, where the equipment was utilized for “live” surgery. Local, regional and international expert surgeons (some of them former sons of KPH) operated in KPH’s theatre whilst being streamed to an audience in the hospital’s Henry Shaw Auditorium.

KPH treats approximately 90,000 patients in the Accident & Emergency Department each year and over 27,000 patients are admitted annually. The KPH Support Team is now turning its attention to a ‘sheet drive’ for the hospital which on average uses 34,000 sheets per year; now that’s a lot of sheets, so its “all systems go” with regard to the team’s next project to assist Jamaica’s largest multidisciplinary hospital in Jamaica’s Public Health Service (established 1776), as well as the largest Trauma Centre in the English-speaking Caribbean.