Residents will be breathing a sigh of relief, especially in their pockets, as the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre (SLBMC) announced over the weekend that MRI services are back up and running.

For some time, services were halted due to a faulty chiller system at the hospital, but according to Medical Director Dr. Albert Duncan that matter has been resolved after “a thorough review of our equipment and ensuring all necessary maintenance and upgrades have been completed, we are confident in providing you with the highest quality MRI services once again”.

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines use a magnetic field and computer-generated radio waves to produce detailed images of organs and tissues inside the human body.

Scans are painless and non-invasive and focus on specific body areas to diagnose various problems.

These areas include the brain and spinal cord (e.g., tumors); the heart and blood vessels (e.g., inflammation or blockages in the blood vessels); internal organs (tumors and abnormalities in the kidneys and liver, for example).

Over the years, the hospital only had one MRI machine, which frequently required repairs, leaving a backlog of patients.

In July last year, the Cabinet announced that they had approved the acquisition of a new machine.

Dr. Duncan thanked the public for their patience and assured them that in the upcoming months, they would try to readjust to providing a “full range of services.”

The Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre has been dealing with low morale among staff for months, with burned-out nurses, an increasingly angry public and an abundance of malfunctioning equipment hampering hospital services.

The Minister of Health held a lengthy press conference last week where he sought to shed some light on the work being done to address these issues.