Improvements In Health Sector

March 10, 2022, marked two years since Jamaica recorded its first case of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and one year since the country began administering the COVID-19 vaccine.

Since then, steps have been taken to enhance the health sector, and make it better able to provide healthcare to those in need.

The Government’s direct COVID-19 health intervention has, so far, cost $26.4 billion.

Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, said over the past 24 months, the Ministry has had a significant increase in its fiscal provision that has enabled it to make advances in the achievement of strategic goals four and six of the Ministry’s 10-Year Strategic Plan.

He informed that under strategic goal four, which seeks to ensure human resources for health, the Ministry has been able to establish 230 new posts for medical officers and more than 1,400 posts for Community Health Aides.

“These are not in most cases contract workers, certainly as it relates to the doctors. We have established these posts and it means an expansion of personnel in our health system,” Dr. Tufton said, in the House of Representatives recently.

Under strategic goal six, which has its focus on making infrastructure available for health service delivery, two wards have been constructed at the St. Joseph’s Hospital and the Falmouth Hospital.

“These wards, while constructed to increase capacity for COVID-19 patients, will, in the aftermath of COVID-19, provide much-needed space to be able to expand the services offered at these hospitals,” Dr. Tufton said.

In addition, the Minister noted that the capacity to mobilise field hospitals and the infrastructure put in place at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), the Spanish Town, May Pen and the Savanna-la-Mar Hospitals, will serve as well-needed overflow areas and be part of contingency plans in case of disasters in the future.

“We are coming out of COVID… as a much stronger health system, certainly as it relates to infrastructure,” Dr. Tufton noted.

Much needed improvements to infrastructure have been done in most hospitals to improve infection prevention and control and to provide isolation areas and capacity for managing high-dependency patients.

The Health Minister said this work has been done at the Kingston Public, Spanish Town, Linstead, Princess Margaret, May Pen, Lionel Town, Mandeville Regional, Black River, Percy Junor, Noel Holmes and Annotto Bay Hospitals.

Additionally, infrastructure for oxygen delivery has been improved significantly with piping of several hospitals to ensure safe, efficient and reliable delivery of oxygen to patients.

Dr. Tufton said this includes Annotto Bay, Port Antonio, National Chest, Spanish Town, Kingston Public, May Pen, Mandeville Regional, Lionel Town, Percy Junor, Black River, Cornwall Regional, Savanna-la-Mar, Falmouth and Noel Holmes Hospitals.

Additional bulk storage capacity has been placed at Princess Margaret, National Chest and Cornwall Regional Hospitals and additional cylinders were put in place in all these facilities.

In terms of ventilators and radiological interventions, Dr. Tufton noted that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was great concern that the country did not have enough ventilators.

“Over the last two years, the Ministry has purchased additional ventilators, and we have received donations from our partners and through the Programme for the Reduction of Maternal and Child Mortality (PROMAC) project. Overall, we now have 167 ventilators in the island and have established 40 additional high dependency spaces in our hospitals,” the Minister said.

“Our capacity for radiological interventions has also increased with the addition of six portable X-rays [machines] that were purchased by the Ministry. This was also boosted by donations from Japan,” he added.

In terms of testing capacity, at both the National Public Health Lab (NPHL) and National Influenza Centre (NIC), the Ministry has increased capacity for RT-PCR testing for the detection of new and emerging pathogens.

Also, there has been the establishment of gene-sequencing capacity for micro-organisms of PH interest at the UHWI and soon to be commenced at the NPHL.

“We have also commenced planning for the establishment of a BIOSAFETY Laboratory Level three at NPHL to be able to better respond to public health emergencies. We have strengthened our surveillance capacity through increased use of available technologies,” Dr. Tufton said.

Significant investments have also been made in GIS technology and the Ministry is now able to chart and geolocate the prevalence of diseases within country.

“Digitalisation of the Class 1 notification system, COVID bed occupancy, disaster management and health facility status will now give us the ability to analyse real-time data and, therefore, make us better able to make timely responses in emergency situations,” Dr. Tufton said.

“There has also been increased manpower capacity in these areas that will augur well for improvements in use of this technology going forward. With these actions, the Ministry continues to strengthen the technical capacity to provide better support to the delivery of public health,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tufton pointed to the need to build a cadre of health workers that is customer centric.

“By this, we mean that our human resources for health policies must reach back as far as the secondary educational system and begin the training of health professionals that never lose their humanity and appetite for empathy in human suffering. We must find opportunities to inculcate more values and systems that allow our people to feel that they are being served in a manner that does not rob them of their humanity or deprive them of their decency,” Dr. Tufton said.

“Our COVID-19 experience has taught us the need to entrench compassion and compassionate care in the health system, so that anyone who does not participate in this culture is left on the periphery as an outlier and not a part of the normal actors, but an anomaly that should be treated and reformed. We must redouble our efforts to train the existing cadre of healthcare workers in delivery care with compassion,” he added.

Dr. Tufton also noted that within the Vision for Health 10-year strategic plan, the Ministry will be making significant investments to improve the health infrastructure with the rehabilitation, expansion, and construction of facilities islandwide.

He also pointed to the need for investment in health promotion and prevention and improving health-seeking behaviour to reduce the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

“COVID-19 has taught us that poor health and the lack of personal responsibility for health outcomes can be a threat to the resilience of the whole society. As we build from this experience, we now need to re-double, indeed triple, our efforts to reduce the primordial impacts on individual health, increase primary prevention through improvement in healthy lifestyle choices, improve health-seeking behaviour to know key aspects of your health status, and, once diagnosed, to have your disease profile controlled,” Dr. Tufton argued.

Over the two years, Jamaica has seen more than 2,800 persons die from COVID-19, representing a mortality rate of 2.2 per cent. In addition, more than 700 nurses migrated for better-paying jobs abroad during the period.