With “hundreds” of people on dialysis in The Bahamas, Minister of Health Dr. Perry Gomez is pushing for a transplant programme.

This he said would ensure that kidney transplants take place more frequently than they do now.

“We need to complement this treatment with transplantation and it’s easily said, but we need to educate our public more about donating organs,” he said.

“I think that’s one of the barriers we have. In more developed societies, people – in making their wills – would say that they would like their organs donated if so and so happened so that other people may benefit….With the university status our hospital has now, it is only reasonable and logical that these kinds of things be taking place in an institution that calls itself a teaching hospital.”

While the minister could not say definitively how many people are on dialysis, he lamented the fact that that “the dialysis is running almost 24/7.”

Renal failure is just one of the main consequences of hypertension, a major health problem in The Bahamas.

Commonly referred to as high blood pressure, the non-communicable disease can also lead to strokes and heart attacks, all of which can be avoided.

Minister Gomez, whose comments came during his appearance on the Love 97/JCN weekly talkshow “Jones and Company” yesterday also commented on the number of people pursuing medicine.

In fact, he said there are now so many graduates, there is insufficient space in the internship programme in The Bahamas.

“You now have the issue of doctors graduating and there’s no job which was hithertofore unheard of. I know of two Bahamians who are interning in Jamaica,” he said, assuring that once the internships are over, they will find jobs in The Bahamas.

This is particularly important considering the Princess Margaret Hospital’s new Critical Care Block, which still has to be properly staffed.

In the case of the hospital’s existing structure, Dr. Gomez said there is “some thought” about making this a coronary unit.

“We want to take a look at the rest of the hospital in its entirety. The building is old and so we hope to get planners in to look at planning a phased approach to the rehabilitation of the entire place because having built this Critical Care Block it just makes what’s left adjacent to it needing to come up to standard,” he said.

“For instance, there is an urgent need to look at a maternal and child care block. One of the problems we have is the fact that for the level of development The Bahamas is at at this time, our maternal and child deaths are far too high. Something is wrong in that area and we have to fix it. Part of it is infrastructure, but I think it is much bigger than that, but the accommodations are limited particularly in emergency cases…Women should not be dying from pregnancy in this day and age in a country as developed as The Bahamas.”