Point Hill Health Centre to be renamed
Published:Friday | October 11, 2019 | 12:07 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
The Point Hill Health Centre will be renamed in honour of the late former Minister of Health Dr Kenneth Baugh.
Minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, Karl Samuda, who made the announcement on Wednesday, said that the decision to rename the St Catherine-based facility was taken at a recent Cabinet meeting.
“This is very personal to me because as you all know, Dr Ken Baugh was a very long and personal friend of mine who passed away recently. Cabinet has given this approval, and it is to operate as a type three health centre, where it is temporarily located on the nearby Point Hill Community Centre,” Samuda said.
The minister said that the temporary relocation is to facilitate the construction of a new health centre, which will be funded through the National Health Fund at a cost of $29 million.
The minister was speaking at a post-Cabinet press briefing on Wednesday at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Andrew.
Samuda said Baugh, who was member of Parliament of West Central St Catherine from 1997 until retirement in 2016, made significant contributions to Jamaica’s health sector.
“He led significant reforms in the health sector, including the eradication of polio and the expansion of the programme on immunization,” he said.
Baugh, who was also a former minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, died on September 1 at the age of 78.