The Linstead Hospital has seen a large number of Jamaicans abandoning their elderly family members at the institution, with 40 per cent of the hospital’s patients being social cases.

Errol Greene, regional director of the South East Regional Health Authority, spoke on the issue yesterday (December 19) on radio station Power 106, where he shared that the Spanish Town Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital are “bursting at the seams” with social cases.

“Hospitals are taken up with people who really need not be there,” he said.

Greene then urged the government to move the individuals to infirmaries, because the “responsibility for the indigent in any parish is that of the local authority”.

The Mandeville Hospital is also experiencing a similar issue, with a total of 14 social cases.

Dr Everton McIntosh, senior medical officer at the Mandeville Regional Hospital, said the hospital also had to bury two patients who were abandoned by their families.

This has been a recurring issue, with Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton making numerous appeals to Jamaicans, asking them to take their family members home.

Reports are that the hospitals have tried to contact these family members, but often find that the wrong contact information was provided.

At the health ministry’s end-of-year press conference on December 15, Tufton addressed the issue again, renewing his call for families to pick up their relatives from the hospitals.

“They become a social case. We have to feed them, they take up bed space, doctors still have to examine them because they need attention and really it deprives those who are genuinely ill and need the attention from being served,” said Tufton at the time.

He added that, particularly during the Christmas season, non-emergent patients are discharged to make room for the potential increase in motor vehicle accidents. But when the discharged patients are not picked up by their relatives, this causes a strain on the hospitals.

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