Dear Editor,
I cannot help but bring to your attention the complete mess the health ministry is in. One would have thought that the Chikungunya mess would have caused the health minister to now step up to the plate and get his office in order. Not so!
For starters, anyone interested in donating medical supplies to Jamaica's hospitals should strap in for the ride of their lives. Expect up to maybe two years, in several cases, of bureaucratic stress from Customs to the health ministry. The only way around it, according to informed friends, is to drop a 'ting' and things will move with much better ease. This is unacceptable and should not and cannot stand.
How is it we can have people willing to donate medical supplies, ranging from surgical gloves to vehicles, having to endure so much stress, while patients in hospitals die or are made worse because of the chronic shortages and mismanagement?
And why, after three years in office, has Dr Fenton Ferguson not fixed the bureaucracy? I am told that one sprightly Jamaican ambassador had to take matters into his/her own hands to get a huge donation through the cobweb.
I am using this space to call on Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to fix this major problem. Many of us have had it.
Marie Reynolds
Brooklyn, NY
Health ministry needs to be de-cluttered
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I cannot help but bring to your attention the complete mess the health ministry is in. One would have thought that the Chikungunya mess would have caused the health minister to now step up to the plate and get his office in order. Not so!
For starters, anyone interested in donating medical supplies to Jamaica's hospitals should strap in for the ride of their lives. Expect up to maybe two years, in several cases, of bureaucratic stress from Customs to the health ministry. The only way around it, according to informed friends, is to drop a 'ting' and things will move with much better ease. This is unacceptable and should not and cannot stand.
How is it we can have people willing to donate medical supplies, ranging from surgical gloves to vehicles, having to endure so much stress, while patients in hospitals die or are made worse because of the chronic shortages and mismanagement?
And why, after three years in office, has Dr Fenton Ferguson not fixed the bureaucracy? I am told that one sprightly Jamaican ambassador had to take matters into his/her own hands to get a huge donation through the cobweb.
I am using this space to call on Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to fix this major problem. Many of us have had it.
Marie Reynolds
Brooklyn, NY
Health ministry needs to be de-cluttered
-->