Technicians from Puerto Rico are busily installing sheets of lead metal on the walls and in the shutters of the newly-refurbished room at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Anguilla, to house the state-of-the-art CT Scan machine, now on order from General Electric in the United States.
Anguilla’s Minister of Social Development and Health, Mr. Evans McNiel Rogers, visited the installation work on Monday June 26 and was pleased with its progress. “It is for safety purposes,” he explained. “Because of my background in the bio-medical field, safety is a critical issue not only for the patients doing the procedures, but also for the operators. There is no shortcut when it comes to safety. You have to do it right.”
Speaking as his men worked, Team Leader, Edgadro Guillen, told The Anguillian: “We are preparing the lead on the floor and then affixing it to the walls with nails. Every sheet of lead is one-sixteenth of an inch thick and over the lead we will be putting sheet rock for the finish. There are a total of sixteen rolls and we will be using 98% of them for the entire room.”
He continued: “We are doing this work because the CT Scan equipment that’s going to be here emits radiation. You don’t want the people around to be contaminated by the radiation so you have to put in a barrier so that the radiation stays in the room and does not go outside.” He said his company, Edgardo Guillen & Associates, had been involved in imaging equipment for 37 years and works for such companies as General Electric, Toshiba, Phillips and Seimens.
Minister Evans Rogers, who expressed appreciation for the company’s current work in Anguilla, pointed out: “The CT Scan machine has gone to the manufacturers and should be completed shortly. I have also ordered a UPS for general protective reasons. It costs an extra 70,000 dollars but it is absolutely necessary in order to preserve the life line of the equipment from the fluctuation of electricity. So the equipment will not be plugged into an outlet but will be fed directly into the UPS. It will take a little time but it will be done right and to international specifications with all the safety precautions in place.”
The 520 CT Scan machine costs in the area of US$450,000 and is part of an effort by Minister Rogers to eventually construct a new state-of the-art medical and health facility for Anguilla.
