Since the end of June 2017, five pregnant women and four adults premature hospital in Cayenne, Guyana, were evacuated to Guadeloupe and Martinique. In question, an extreme understaffing, which does not allow the neonatal intensive care unit in Cayenne to accommodate all the patients. “Transfers are organized in the West Indies and concern in-utero transfers (after agreement of the future parturient) and babies” explains the management of the hospital to theAFP. The trips, made by plane, last about 2 hours. A doctor from the Cayenne hospital adds: “Every day there is a crisis meeting”.
70 hours of work per week
According to a doctor at the hospital, this critical situation can be explained by “three years of overwork and under-staffing. We work more than reasonable hours, under budgetary restrictions. The team is very deserving and works six days a week, 70 hours a week. So after a while it cracks.
This crisis situation is linked to the opening of an investigation by the Cayenne prosecutor’s office after the deaths of five very premature babies “as a result of a nosocomial infection“, which occurred in the hospital department in July-August 2016. The Regional Health Agency (ARS) had specified at that time that” the Staphylococcus aureus is a very common germ, especially in tropical environments. “But the hospital staff has, since these incidents, been angry with the inhabitants:” The users spit on us, but they do not realize “, testifies a doctor of the service of neonatal resuscitation.
Cayenne hospital is the only intensive care unit in Guyana, a region of France with more than 260,000 inhabitants and characterized by one of the highest fertility rates in the country. The service having only 32 beds, the management of the establishment recognizes that the reception capacity is “often exceeded”.
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