An­na-Lisa Paul

For­mer ra­dio an­nounc­er and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty George “Um­bala” Joseph died on Sat­urday.

The 84-year-old was ad­mit­ted to the St James Med­ical Com­plex on Tues­day and had spent three days un­der a tent on the hos­pi­tal’s com­pound along the West­ern Main Road be­fore be­ing ward­ed.

Joseph re­port­ed­ly reached out to a fel­low me­dia prac­ti­tion­er at Guardian Me­dia for help to high­light his plight as he con­tin­ued to be sub­ject­ed to the heat; fumes from pass­ing ve­hi­cles; and the portable toi­let which he was un­able to use due to his lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty.

At the time, Joseph said he had been forced to re­lieve him­self be­hind the tent.

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Joseph said, “I’m not com­plain­ing be­cause I’m not ex­pect­ed to be treat­ed bet­ter or dif­fer­ent. I am com­plain­ing be­cause that is what peo­ple have to go through. If you saw the filthy con­di­tion, it will ap­pal you as it does me.”

North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) CEO An­tho­ny Blake re­spond­ed to the sit­u­a­tion last week, as he ad­mit­ted that they con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges in main­tain­ing a par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

He re­port­ed­ly ac­knowl­edged that staff mem­bers were strug­gling with the lack of ca­pac­i­ty for pa­tients ad­mit­ted via the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency, as they strived to fol­low pol­i­cy to fa­cil­i­tate those sus­pect­ed of COVID-19.

He said last week that Joseph’s sit­u­a­tion was un­for­tu­nate, but the sit­u­a­tion at the hos­pi­tal has been the norm since the start of the pan­dem­ic.

Con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day on Joseph’s pass­ing, his fam­i­ly re­mained un­clear as to what had tran­spired from the time he was ad­mit­ted un­til his death

A male rel­a­tive said, “He did not have COVID be­cause his PCR test was neg­a­tive. They just kept him out­side.”

Un­able to pro­vide much more de­tails about Joseph’s pass­ing, the fam­i­ly de­clined to re­veal his med­ical his­to­ry and said they would be await­ing the au­top­sy re­sults.