BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) has denied allegations that “a higher than usual number of dialysis patients have died in recent days” as a result of several non-working dialysis machines.
Queen Elizabeth Hospital (File Photo)In a statement, the QEH did not provide any figures regarding deaths at the facility, but said it wanted to “definitively refute this baseless allegation” circulating on social media that a higher number of patients had died at its Acute Kidney Unit (AKU).
“For context, the AKU, also known as the Dialysis Unit, welcomes 66 patients with end-stage renal disease requiring life-saving hemodialysis per day, six days per week, and has a complement of 24 working Dialysis Machines,” the QEH said.
It said that 22 of these are in use daily, and two back-up machines remain working and ready for immediate use should the need arise.
“It has been confirmed that there has been no need for the back-up machines to be cycled into use in recent times as there have been zero machine failures.”
The QEH said that the AKU “follows and adheres to all international maintenance standards, Infection Prevention and Control guidelines as well as Quality Standards on water testing, high level disinfection and more.
“This is corroborated by the fact that for the month of June, there is no evidence to date from laboratory tests to show contamination within the department.”
It said that so far this year, all scheduled daily, weekly, monthly and annual regular to high-level deep cleaning has been executed in full and on time and that operations on the unit continue, “maintaining all standards of care, maintenance and infection prevention and control”.
