The Spanish Town Hospital is celebrating 70 years of providing quality health care to the people of St. Catherine and surrounding parishes. Built in 1952, the facility provides primary and secondary care services to the parish’s growing population, as well as patients from Kingston and St. Andrew, and parts of Clarendon, St. Mary, and St. Ann. Among these are general...

Having reached more than 600 primary-school children in five parishes through her ‘Project Healthy Smiles Jamaica’ outreach project, Miss Jamaica Festival Queen 2021, and dentist, Dr. Dominique Reid, is relishing the success of the initiative. The project targeted children aged 12 years and younger, providing them with free dental checks, teeth cleanings and fluoride treatments, during her ‘Tooth Tour’, which...

The Westmoreland Public Health Department has been distributing water drum covers to various communities across the parish, in a bid to reduce mosquito breeding. Health Promotion and Education Officer of the Department, Gerald Miller, told JIS News that some $100,000 was used from the health promotion budget to procure 100 drum covers to distribute to households within the parish where...

The Bustamante Hospital for Children, in partnership with the Southeast Regional Health Authority (SERHA), will be launching its inaugural Child Safety public education campaign in May as part of activities to mark Child Month. This is to sensitise parents and caregivers about critical interventions that should be implemented to safeguard children three to 17 years of age against the ingestion...

The Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN) has commended the Government, particularly the Ministries of Education and Youth, and Health and Wellness, for taking steps to address unhealthy eating in schools. Speaking at a recent JIS ‘Think Tank’, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator at the JYAN, Shereika Mills, said that “we all have to start taking steps to realise our Vision 2030...

After spending much of his earlier years in paediatricians’ offices, between the Bustamante Hospital for Children (BHC) and private medical centres for childhood asthma, Dr. Andrew Burton knew that he would become a paediatrician and set himself on a path to achieve his goal. The young Senior Registrar in the Paediatric Medicine Department at BHC tells JIS NEWS that his...

The Government has established a sports medicine rehabilitation programme, which will ensure that athletes have easier access to medical care and less costly services and equipment. The Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with local and overseas partners to advance the programme. Partners are the Montefiore University Hospital/Albert Einstein Medical School, a...

Food-borne diseases have threatened human health for centuries. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), there is an alarming number of persons that are affected by foodborne diseases. It is estimated that one in six Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalised, and 3,000 die of food-borne diseases each year. Countries have...

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...