WILLEMSTAD - Last week, Curacao Medical Center (CMC) received the necessary supplies for surgery procedures from a supplier in the United States. Now the hospital can resume the existing schedule for patients who needs surgery.

As indicated earlier, the COVID-19 situation has led to a global shortage of products (the so-called PPEs) that specifically serve for protection during surgery. This allowed CMC to perform only acute and essential surgeries.

Partly thanks to the supplies received, the surgery program can be scaled and in this way patients can be scheduled again for surgery.

A partnership has also been established with the supplier, so that the CMC can continue to receive supplies (weekly) in a structured way. This guarantees sufficient supplies in-house and in stock for the necessary surgeries.

The expectations are that all 6 operating rooms will be operational within two weeks. In this way, the capacity of the CMC will be optimized. This will remedy the backlog of the waiting list that the CMC has been working on from the beginning.

Reasons for waiting list backlog:

(1) The CMC had to immediately discontinue the elective surgeries of the SEHOS (old hospital) to be as efficient and effective as possible in the transition from SEHOS to the CMC on November 15, 2019.

(2) Shortly after opening the CMC, there was no capacity growth due to 3 major challenges (Laboratory, ICT and patient registration).

(3) A shortage of OR staff during January and February this year.

(4) Due to precautionary measures regarding the global pandemic of Covid-19.