By the end of August this year, the Sir Lester Bird Medical Center will have a new MRI machine.

There has been an antagonizing long wait patients experience when scheduled to have an MRI undertaken at the hospital

Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister Lionel Max Hurst says a decision was taken to purchase an additional MRI machine in order to reduce the wait and to increase the speed with which MRI diagnosis can take place at the nation’s public hospital.

He confirmed that it will cost in excess of half a million dollars.

“It will come with expertise that would have to be flown into Antigua to ensure the machine is configured correctly for our purposes. Also, it will happen sometime within the month of August. There are great demands for MRIs, whether it be for broken bones or to examine organs that cannot be ordinarily seen. There are so many people who have been assigned by their doctors to have this diagnosis done but would have had to wait for long periods of time,” Hurst said

He said the new MRI was based on recommendations by Health Minister Sir Molwyn Joseph

An MRI or Magnetic resonance imaging is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body.

MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves to generate images of the organs in the body.