Jubilee Hospital receives heartbeat monitors

Approximately 6,000 patients who utilise the Victoria Jubliee Hospital (VJH) annually will benefit from 27 brand new EDAN fetal Doppler machines.

The machines, which are used for monitoring fetal heart sounds - which indicates how well babies are doing - were handed over to the hospital from from JURA Foundation, a charitable organisation based in Florida, USA. President of the JURA Foundation, Len Johnson, said JURA has been assisting VJH for close to a decade. So far the organisation has donated approximately US$500,000 (approximately J$79.6 million) worth of medical equipment.

"These visits are eye openers and once you come and you see what is really happening it paints a whole different picture from just someone calling up and say we need 'xyz'," said Johnson. "This is my first visit here and my past president had told me stories about what the condition is like here and I felt like I understood what she was saying quite well, until I stood by the door of the intensive care unit and saw the monitors with the babies kicking."

"It kinda brought a whole different dimension to it and I almost had to wipe back tears. There is no way you can be human and you see this and not react to it," he added.

Johnson said that after visiting VJH and seeing the situation firsthand, his only hope was that they had the resources to do more.

"I know for the incubators that we brought in the hospital was at a critical state where they had only one and so when Dr [Garth] McDonald (the hospital's senior medical officer), reached out to us we were able to acquire others for them and since then they have been getting more and more. Unfortunately it takes a critical situation a lot of times for people in general to take actions. We tend to react to these needs rather than be proactive but I am glad we are here and my only wish is that we could do more," Johnson said.

McDonald said the monitors will improve the maternal care given at the health facility.

"These Dopplers will allow the mothers to hear their babies heart when they are in the clinic. It will also help to lessen the use of the CTG machines (which also measure babies' heart rates) ... and they will preserve those machines for longer," McDonald said.