Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton’s admission of the inadequacies of Jamaica’s public health system is beyond challenge. Indeed, that fact and many other sordid details of the problems afflicting public health have been exposed ad nauseam in both the print and electronic media for many years.

Therefore, when Minister Tufton told delegates attending the Jamaica 55 Diaspora Conference this week that “our health infrastructure is ageing and does pose a challenge to the curative side of what we face” he was really reiterating a well-known fact.

What, therefore, is important is how we tackle this nagging problem, because this country cannot continue to fail its citizens in this vital area. A stark and most frightening indication of that reality was revealed at this week’s sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) in Parliament. According to the health officials who appeared before the committee, approximately 300 children are on a waiting list for cardiac surgery at Bustamante Hospital for Children. If that was not bad enough, we are told that these children will have to wait at least another three months before the first of those surgeries is done.

The issue of the new cardiac wing at the hospital was discussed at that PAAC meeting with the permanent secretary in the health ministry stating that the facility is now ready and final arrangements are being made to have it equipped by mid-August.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/public-health-we-can-8217-t-continue-like-this_106086