Where’s the urgency to fix Jamaica’s healthcare crisis?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

As Jamaica heads into another general election, the nation is again awash with promises of progress and prosperity. Yet one of the most urgent and devastating crisis continues to be overlooked: the collapse of the healthcare system.

For many people, healthcare is not a right, it is a luxury. Teachers, civil servants, and young professionals are postponing critical medical treatment because their income must first cover basic expenses. This is more than an economic issue. It is a moral failure.

We are constantly told that healthcare in Jamaica is ‘free’. But what good is free care if it comes too late or not at all? The hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients wait for hours, sometimes days, only to be turned away or treated in overcrowded, under-resourced wards. Essential medications are often unavailable. Equipment is broken or outdated. And behind the scenes, exhausted nurses and doctors are doing their best in conditions that rob them of the ability to care.

This is crisis management, and it is failing.

Behind every policy failure is a human life. A child with asthma who can’t get a nebuliser. A grandmother left on a stretcher in a hallway for 48 hours. A man ignoring chest pains because he knows he can’t afford the tests. These are not exceptions. They are everyday realities.

The time for empty promises for Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party is over. People are not looking for clever slogans, they want real, detailed, actionable plans.

How will you reduce wait times and increase staffing in public hospitals? How will you improve rural access to care and ensure hospitals are fully stocked and functional? What steps will you take to make private healthcare more affordable for ordinary citizens? How will you ensure that no person regardless of where they live or how much they earn, is denied timely, quality care?

We cannot keep normalising suffering. We cannot keep burying loved ones who could have been saved. Jamaica’s healthcare system is not just in trouble, it is in collapse. And until our leaders face this reality with urgency and clarity, that collapse will continue.

So before we cast a single vote in this election, we must demand answers. Not sound bites, answers. Not later, now.

No person should die because they were born into the wrong community or pay grade. And no government deserves our vote if it cannot guarantee the right to healthcare.

JOHNOY DAVIS