QUICKER, SAFER BLOOD FOR PATIENTS
CCB Contributes To Hospital Machine
The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Anguilla is to add a very important piece of equipment to its inventory. It is an automated machine called a Diamed Blood System for blood grouping and cross-matching as well as for antibody identification.
The Caribbean Commercial Bank is the latest of number of business places on the island to contribute to the purchase of the equipment. At a ceremony on September 20, the Bank's Managing Director, Mr Preston Bryan, presented a cheque for US $ 2,500.00 to Director of Health Services, Dr Franklin Lloyd.
"We recognise the importance of health care. We know it is expensive and that the department is heavily subsidised by Government and we thought it was a privilege to offer funding for this piece of equipment," Mr Bryan said in presenting the cheque on behalf of the Bank's Board of Directors, "I am sure that this equipment together with services available to the department would help to save somebody's life. We are particularly proud to be able to make this presentation."
Senior Medical Technologist at the Hospital, Miss Everette Duncan, said the Diamed Blood System would replace the present manual system and provide a number of benefits. "It will reduce by half the amount of time required for cross-matching of blood. This means that blood can be available in a quicker time to clients, especially trauma clients," she explained. "It will also enhance, improve and more importantly standardise the blood banking process. Everybody will be doing the same thing, in the same way and allow for checks and balances to be put in place for error monitoring. The blood bank is an area where mistakes can be fatal and [the mistakes] are therefore not tolerated."
Miss Duncan thanked the Caribbean Commercial Bank for its generous gift. She said it was over two years that the hospital had been accumulating the funds to purchase the machine. She named other sponsors as including National Caribbean Insurance Company, Hansa Bank, National Bank of Anguilla, Barclays Bank, Lake & Kentish and the Government of Anguilla.
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great
and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.
O. S. Marden
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