Dear Editor,
It shameful, disgraceful and scandalous that under this People’s National Party Government, the country’s public health sector has massively deteriorated to the extent that many hospitals and health centres are grossly underfunded, understaffed and underequipped, thus giving substandard medical service to their patients.
The four regional health authorities are a prodigious waste of taxpayers’ money and should be scrapped. The money assigned to them is causing the country’s hospitals and health centres to starve. If they are immediately scrapped, it will allow the health ministry to directly allocate funding to the hospitals and facilitate the direct management of the operations of each hospital through the chief executive officer and senior medical officer of health.
The heavily staffed and incompetent regional health authorities were established to provide jobs for party hacks, supporters and activists. They have vulgarly wasted and squandered billions of taxpayers’ dollars to the detriment of this country. A tremendous amount of corruption and stealing is alleged taking place, which is partially the reason patients at public hospitals cannot get drugs.
All this requires the immediate attention of the newly appointed health minister.
Additional funding for all type two and three hospitals is urgently required to methodically address the enormous shortage of medical equipment which currently exists across those hospitals within the country. Every type one hospital should have the required MRI equipment, and at least 25 intensive care beds and associated life-saving equipment.
The issue of drug abuse is all pervasive across Western Jamaica and the drug rehabilitation ward at the Cornwall Regional Hospital has been closed for the past 10 years. The regional health authority, whose job it is to focus on the area, did nothing about this.
All four regional authority are not worth having and should be scrapped. Central management could do no worse.
Robert Dalley BA, Esq
robertdalley1@hotmail.com
It shameful, disgraceful and scandalous that under this People’s National Party Government, the country’s public health sector has massively deteriorated to the extent that many hospitals and health centres are grossly underfunded, understaffed and underequipped, thus giving substandard medical service to their patients.
The four regional health authorities are a prodigious waste of taxpayers’ money and should be scrapped. The money assigned to them is causing the country’s hospitals and health centres to starve. If they are immediately scrapped, it will allow the health ministry to directly allocate funding to the hospitals and facilitate the direct management of the operations of each hospital through the chief executive officer and senior medical officer of health.
The heavily staffed and incompetent regional health authorities were established to provide jobs for party hacks, supporters and activists. They have vulgarly wasted and squandered billions of taxpayers’ dollars to the detriment of this country. A tremendous amount of corruption and stealing is alleged taking place, which is partially the reason patients at public hospitals cannot get drugs.
All this requires the immediate attention of the newly appointed health minister.
Additional funding for all type two and three hospitals is urgently required to methodically address the enormous shortage of medical equipment which currently exists across those hospitals within the country. Every type one hospital should have the required MRI equipment, and at least 25 intensive care beds and associated life-saving equipment.
The issue of drug abuse is all pervasive across Western Jamaica and the drug rehabilitation ward at the Cornwall Regional Hospital has been closed for the past 10 years. The regional health authority, whose job it is to focus on the area, did nothing about this.
All four regional authority are not worth having and should be scrapped. Central management could do no worse.
Robert Dalley BA, Esq
robertdalley1@hotmail.com