The Ministry of Health and Wellness has disclosed that there are currently 43 adult intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the public healthcare system.

This was disclosed by the chief medical officer (CMO), Dr Jacquiline Bisasor McKenzie, during a post-cabinet press briefing on Wednesday, June 26.

“We presently have 43 ICU beds or ICU designated spaces that we can get up if we have staffing in place. In addition, we have 23 high-dependency areas that have been created. We would also have within our recovery rooms the capacity to ventilate people for very short periods until they are able to be moved to a high dependency or an intensive care unit, and we have 19 such spaces in the recovery rooms,” she stated.

Meanwhile, there are some 56 spaces in the neonatal intensive care units across the country, according to Bisasor-McKenzie.

“Usually a third to a half of these can be ventilated spaces, but many of these spaces support the babies with other means of respiratory support, and then through PROMAC, we established 10 maternal high dependency units in three hospitals. So, all of these spaces are potentially available, but not all of them are up and running. The running of an intensive care unit or high dependency space is highly dependent not just on critical equipment but also on critical staffing levels,” the CMO said. 

Opposition spokesperson on Health and Wellness, Dr. Alfred Dawes, called on the Health Ministry on Monday, June 24, to disclose the number of available adult intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the healthcare system.

This call followed reports that, in spite of 210 registered ventilators in the system, there are less than 40 adult ICU beds available islandwide.