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Vendors have made a stomping ground of one of the island's major health facilities, barging on to the wards and selling everything from panties to pineapples, The STAR has learnt.
Residents and former patients at the health facility recently pointed out the situation to THE STAR, revealing that the activity was nothing new, but was almost a feature of the hospital.
One woman, Dusty Lewis, went as far as to say <span style="font-weight: bold">that patients on the wards sometimes have cellular phone numbers for the vendors and frequently call them whenever an item is needed</span>.
"Yes, they do. So for example, if a patient wants a juice or anything, they would call that vendor and he would bring it on to the ward and sell it," she said.
Lewis said that her daughter, who was on one of the hospital wards sometime ago, said vendors would be there peddling their wares even during the nights, undisturbed. "It seems as if it doesn't matter to people because they need the items anyway," Lewis said.
While security guards are on duty at the facility, Lewis said she does not recall ever seeing a guard apprehending a vendor for selling on the ward.
Another resident, Carlene Thomas, who was recently admitted at the hospital, said that she has even witnessed security guards allowing vendors to come in to sell on the maternity ward.
"When I was on maternity ward (in March), they (the vendors) would come in and sell, the security or the nurse did not normally chase them. They would sell like toiletries, panties and so forth, things that the patients need," she said. "They come in handy sometimes, and if they couldn't come on the ward, they would sell you from the outside." Thomas said she could not say if anyone on the ward had a problem with the vendors as they often got good support when they visited.
When contacted by THE STAR, the chief executive officer of the hospital denied the claims that vendors were making it on to any of the hospital's seven wards. Instead, he said that the sellers are sometimes on the hospital property but "are usually quickly escorted away by the security".
In an emailed response to THE STAR, the CEO wrote: "The problem of vending on the hospital property is a long-standing one which we are now having some success in controlling."
He added that the combined efforts of police and private security have removed the sellers "hence there are no vendors on or in the vicinity of the wards now, except the odd one that may enter the premises from the back where there is no fencing."
*Name changed upon request
<span style="font-weight: bold"> damn..wat about infection control </span>
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