EDITORIAL - When the PNP speaks of attacks on hospitals

Like the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) and its shadow health minister, Dr Fenton Ferguson, this newspaper is outraged at the recent 'invasion' by armed men of the Bustamante Hospital for Children, as well as other public health-care facilities in Jamaica.

Among the more recent victims of these acts of criminality are the Kingston Public Hospital, Rollington Town Clinic, St Jago Health Centre, Princess Margaret Hospital and the Spanish Town Hospital.

We, like Dr Ferguson, find that these acts of impunity by the criminals can only place greater pressure on an already burdened health delivery system, undermining the quality of health care available to patients.

But we are particularly angry over the events at Bustamante, the country's only specialist hospital for children, especially that it happened not once, but twice. The behaviour displayed the willingness of the criminals to prey on the weak and vulnerable and the gross violation of the responsibility, moral and legal, that adults bear for the protection of children.

In that regard, we endorse Dr Ferguson's call for the health minister, Mr Ruddy Spencer, to make public the findings of a security audit, if it was completed, of all health facilities, which he ordered when gunmen first barged in at Bustamante.

But even as we understand the need for special security attention at health-care facilities, especially those geared to children, we are painfully aware that this can't be isolated from the broader crisis of criminality in Jamaica and the limited resources available with which to address this problem. Which is why we believe it pertinent to ask Dr Ferguson about his attitude towards efforts to tackle crime in Jamaica, including the recent state of emergency, whose untimely collapse we greatly lament.

We know the academic drill: that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Nonetheless, there are some statistics on crime that correlate with the two-month life of the state of emergency that was imposed in late May, after armed irregulars in Tivoli Gardens directly challenged the Jamaican state, whose strength and long-term survivability is a matter often debated these days. Among the issues that drive this fear that Jamaica may be tilting towards failure as a state are its homicide rate of 65 per 100,000 and the power of gangs.

Security forces left scrambling

In June, at the height of the emergency powers, there were 91 murders in Jamaica, 24 per cent less than the same month a year earlier, and 49 per cent lower than in May. Similarly impressive declines were recorded in July.

Then the state of emergency, which the security forces hoped to maintain for another month, collapsed because the Opposition did not support it and created an unnecessary squabble over its continuation. Shamefully, too, the Government did not muster its own members in Parliament to support the motion and failed to compromise on the extension.

The security forces, appreciating a broader notion of national security than the Opposition appears to grasp, were left scrambling to reorient operational strategies. The criminals have been emboldened.

The police are yet to reveal crime data for August. But on the anecdotal evidence, we expect them to be higher than July's. Peter Bunting, the PNP's shadow security minister, might just claim that the former Tivoli Gardens boss, Christopher Coke, is, from his lock-up in America, reissuing "criminal franchises" to gangs in Jamaica.

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