Ronald Thwaites | Healthcare connundrum

What is the reflection on the Minister of Health when the Prime Minister is reported to be ordering an investigation into the health sector? Why not just call on his minister to give an account? Has the prime minister lost confidence in the person to whom he has entrusted responsibility?

Stung by the experience of many members of the public who interface with the hospitals and clinics and reeling from the avoidable tragedy of the premature baby dying for want of a functioning ventilator, Mr. Holness, who once shared his nightmares of hearing the cries of dead neo-nates, has overreached his minister and grabbed the reins of yet another ministry. Any self-respecting portfolio holder faced with this embarrassment should resign forthwith.

CROSSES

One of the crosses of the Westminster model of governance is that all ministers serve entirely at the whim of the Prime Minister. They are the most temporary of clerks amidst a slew of permanent employees who operate largely on their own terms. Little performance measurement and even less accountability equals low productivity and poor service. There are no sanctions.

How else do you parse $700 billion spent over the past ten years for which there are no proper accounts available? Plenty of excuses, ex post facto explanations of avoidable deaths and self congratulations. And not one whit of responsibility from those who splurged a 200 per cent salary increase on themselves but cannot find or bother to account for the money to keep a life-saving machine operative in May Pen. That is Babylon – not prosperity!

BIG PROBLEMS

Obviously there are significant problems in the health sector but the dissing of Tufton won’t help to solve them. Neither will an in-house investigation by the very ministry about which complaints are directed. Very little will come of this beyond the humiliation of the minister, the increased scorn of taxpayers and more suffering.

Like education and other sectors, the health system has such hardened arteries that significant change is hard to come by. Why not ask a combined team from the medical and nurses associations to do a quick and dirty survey of emergency and neo-natal capacities and say what it will take to bring them up to adequacy?

THE POLITICS OF HEALTH

The figures quoted by Dr Dawes showing growing instances of maternal and infant deaths are alarming. Dawes, unlike Tufton, comes from the belly of the beast having served as a public medical officer. Ideally, if we were not so tribal and distrustful of each other, Tufton and Dawes ought to work together to solve the very problems they are now cussing each other about. The public’s health and life are at stake.

Why are there not functioning neo-natal accessible ventilators at the May Pen Hospital? Where else are they missing or non-functional? Now we are told that it’s not only a machine story but a shortage of trained staff to deliver critical care treatment.

But how come? There were heroic doctors and nurses to manually aspirate that premature-born child of God but apparently not enough fully trained personnel to operate life-saving equipment routinely? What then is the likelihood of improvement?

EQUAL WORTH?

When I experienced a medical emergency high in the Blue Mountains in 2015, a helicopter was sent to get me to hospital quickly. Portia saw to that and was waiting to see that I received the best care. Christopher Tufton was treated similarly when he suffered a mishap recently. That premature infant’s life is no less valuable than ours in the sight of God. Every human life must be accorded dignity and respect otherwise you and I are next to suffer and perish. Why wasn’t a ventilator brought in or the child swiftly transferred to better care?

IT’S NOT ONLY MONEY

Please don’t justify this fatal dereliction because of lack of money. The evidence is that $4 billion worth of equipment and supplies have been given specifically to avoid instances like these. Then there is the $700 billion …

The evident crisis in the health care system contributes to the conviction of the majority of Jamaicans that there are different standards of worth, dignity and care afforded to our citizens. There will never be peace and prosperity until we address the endemic and correctable inequalities in our society: Who gets to live, who gets to eat, who gets a serviceable education; who gets access to a ventilator, who is able to flourish.

These inequities are what frighten away many diasporans from returning home and makes them hold onto foreign citizenship and the attendant benefits even as their spirits and talents yearn for full engagement in the land of their birth.

PRODUCTIVITY AND LITERACY

Last week King Charles’ sworn Privy Counsellor and our Prime Minister bewailed the incongruity between elevated public sector salaries and improved productivity. Also, the World Bank told us what Professor Patterson had previously confirmed, that our education system is in crisis, thus stunting growth and creating the context where a teenager can drudge a loaded gun to school.

Yet the Ministry of Education, full of good intentions, is so structurally fettered that existing resources cannot be sufficiently redirected to eradicate illiteracy which is going to get worse with the regression which every idle summer brings.

Please! There is still time for a mandatory summer school for all students operating below grade level in literacy and numeracy. Now that would be the kind of ‘Spark’ to ignite a virtuous burning bush which ought never to be extinguished!

It’s the political will to effect systemic change that is missing in our culture, occasioning all the money wasted, the finger-pointing and the public relations. So far the effort at constitutional reform is not dealing with such fundamentals.

As Professor Orlando Patterson writes about us in The Confounded Island, aptly quoted by Justice Batts in his SSL judgment, “…it is one thing to know and learn the declarative knowledge of an institution but quite another to learn the procedural knowledge or knowhow to practice it successfully”.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.