Jamaican Researcher

Sleeping with Roaches: Denial of Adequate Maternal Care in Jamaican Public Hospitals

A few weeks ago the Sunday Gleaner, Jamaica’s premier newspaper, reported that the conditions of maternity wards at major public hospitals were Dehumanising.

It cited the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, where I and my kin were born, as well as the Spanish Town Hospital as facilitating the use of extremely unhealthy practices while providing care to mothers immediately after delivery. The main issue of concern is the historically routine practice of making two adult women and their infants share a single twin size bed at such a vulnerable, sensitive, and personal time.

Both the Medical Association of Jamaica and the Nurses’ Association of Jamaica condemned the practice of bed sharing on maternity wards as unhealthy and dangerous. This certainly, for us as Jamaicans, highlight another sphere within which denial of basic human rights is evident–our inability to access safe and adequate health care.

We are told that our human resources are our most valuable, further we tell our children that they are the future, but we fail miserably, in telling them that we as a Government and people have not been doing enough to guarantee for them a quality life. For me, this story of bed sharing on twin beds at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital is a memory that’s truly unforgettable. Like so many horror stories shared since my mom delivered me there in 1979, I came to experience my own during my stay in 2003. Not only was I made to share on a twin bed with other human beings, but I had no choice when night came and I had to welcome countless millions of roaches as well.

The roaches descended on us from surreptitious caveats. I remember standing with my infant in one hand and my belongings in the other, anxiously anticipating the break of dawn. The experience was unforgettably horrendous and it underscores how little value we, as a society, place on the women who reproduce our next generation and how unaware we are of the psychological traumas that such human rights denials have on our children.

Let us dare to care and dare to provide safe and adequate health care for All Jamaicans. The health of our maternity wards must be thoroughly investigated as the experiences of unsafe conditions and inadequate health care are not mere tales, rather they are Real experiences that should be used and must be harnessed to stimulate development and change.

We need to show all our young ones and mothers that we care for and love them. Let’s pressure the Ministry and Minister of Health to change the situation NOW!