Saint Lucia: Health Ministry hands over renal dialysis equipment to Millennium Heights Medical Complex

Saint Lucia: Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs Ministry recently handed over renal dialysis equipment to the Millennium Heights Medical Complex, which is expected to aid in improving the quality of care services to renal patients.

Acting Director of Administration at the Millennium Heights Medical Complex Jennifer Forrester thanked the ministry for their unwavering support and investment in healthcare in Saint Lucia.

“Your gesture here today in the form of a gift of renal dialysis equipment will impact the lives of a significant number of our patients. We consider it an extremely valuable and meaningful contribution in support of the delivery of care to our renal patients who present at the facility daily. This urgently required equipment will be put to use in very short order. In fact, in the next few days, with the support of our technical team who will undertake installation and our clinical team who will be utilizing the equipment.”

Minister for Health Moses Jn Baptiste said he is very pleased to work together with the hospital to address the challenges faced on a daily basis and to improve the delivery of health care to patients.

“I am very pleased that the donation of the renal unit with eight chairs will help to augment the dialysis, the service for people who have dialyzed here at the OKEU. It is going to assist with filtration and with some other services. I am very happy that the medical professionals will get an additional tool to help us with our situation here.”

Consultant Nephrologist at the Millennium Heights Medical Complex, Dr Merle Clarke, expressed appreciation for the donation, which will surely make a huge difference in the services provided to renal patients.

“What has been happening really over the past few months is that water treatment has been problematic. Hence the reason this equipment is particularly necessary. You can’t dialyze patients without water. As it pertains to dialysis, without water, nothing happens. And, of course, because of the technicalities of dialysis, this water has to be purified, and this is what it allows us to do. This makes a huge difference and will make a huge difference in how we have been operating; take some stress off some of our very hardworking staff and, of course, allow our patients to have the full four-hour sessions that ideally they should have in a sense we had to cut back a little bit on some patients because of equipment that wasn’t functioning as it should.”

The renal dialysis equipment will be used to progressively purify water at each step and ensure dialysis treatment is effective.