The Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) Medical Laboratory received a donation of new lab equipment from the US Embassy and International Federation of the Red Cross in a brief handover ceremony held on Tuesday, March 9th as part of the USAID initiative. Officials from the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) and PMH welcomed Mrs. Usha E. Pitts, Charge’ d’Affaires, U.S Embassy, Mr. James Bellamy, USAI/IFRC Representative and Ms. Terez Curry, President, Bahamas Red Cross Society to the hospital’s Critical Care Block for the event and Dr. Candace Edwards, Microbiologist, led a tour of PMH Medical Lab, focused on the new donated equipment.
The BioFire TORCH represents an upgrade in the medical lab testing capacity for PMH as it utilizes multiplex PCR technology which can offer rapid testing for COVID-19 and other infectious agents. The Biofire TORCH will also aid in reducing the incidents of multi-drug resistance within the hospital, reducing hospitalization time and associated infections as well as improving the opportunity for implementing appropriate treatments in much shorter times. With the new equipment, testing procedures that may have taken three (3) to four (4) days to complete prior to the use of this new technology can now be screened within an hour.
Charge’ d’Affaires Pitts brought brief remarks following a demonstration of the new equipment, “As you all know the United States and The Bahamas are very close friends. I think everything-- from this BioFire machine [donation], to some of the other donations--they're all representative, they're all exemplary of our friendship and our relationship.”
“We have a new administration that has strongly and enthusiastically recommitted the United States to the world stage [...] This is a President [Joseph R. Biden Jr.] who not only puts his money where his mouth is, but he understands that we have to support our partners in every way possible.
“I want to thank the Ministry of Health for working with us and being our partners on this. The Ministry of Health has worked very hard, and very commendably, to control the [COVID-19] pandemic in The Bahamas.”
President Curry, Bahamas Red Cross, spoke to the organizations involvement with USAID and its funding to The Bahamas to fight COVID-19, “We are honored that the United States Government through United States Agency for International Development responded positively to an appeal launched last year by the Bahamas Red Cross and IFRC. Even more honored to be the conduit for some of the funding.
We want to thank publicly the U.S. government, and the U.S. Agency for International Development for choosing the IFRC, and by extension, the Bahamas Red Cross Society as a partner for assisting in our country's development. Together, we continue to wage war on this pandemic. We are optimistic that with contributions like this from the U.S. Government, that we will be able to eventually overcome this unprecedented health crisis.”
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Pearl McMillan, conveyed gratitude to the donors on behalf of the Ministry of Health and Bahamas Government, saying, “Today, we are very grateful to the US Embassy and the International Federation of the Red Cross for their generous donation of BIOFIRE TORCH, multiplex PCR technology to the Princess Margaret Hospital Laboratory. With this technology, panel results can be available within forty-five (45) minutes from time on, to time off the machine.” She also advised, “This technology will benefit Bahamians even after we have finally put the current COVID-19 pandemic behind us. The BIOFIRE TORCH will aid the PMH laboratory in providing clinicians with a wide range of infectious disease diagnosis in many different specimen types from respiratory specimens, blood cultures to diagnosing meningitis.”
The BioFire FilmArray Torch has been installed in the PMH Medical Lab and is fully functional.
