Jamaica, Manitoba move to collaborate to boost health sector
Published:Saturday | September 3, 2022 | 12:08 AMCarl Gilchrist/Gleaner Writer
Jamaica is exploring a partnership with the Canadian province of Manitoba on matters of health to tackle a nursing shortage and other human resource challenges as well as the digitising of the health system in the island.
Jamaica’s health and wellness minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, and his counterpart from Manitoba, Audrey Gordon, held a preliminary meeting on Thursday at the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital to discuss the possible pact.
“We are pleased with this discussion and collaboration, which, hopefully, will follow,” Tufton told The Gleaner after a tour of the hospital.
Gordon, a Jamaican, is the first black person to sit as a cabinet minister in Manitoba, a province with a population of more than 1.3 million people, with just under 750,000 of them residing in the capital, Winnipeg.
“We discussed a range of issues around challenges in public health in our respective geographic areas, solutions to those challenges, which meant a sharing of ideas, and, of course, did a tour to look at some of our facilities and concluded with a commitment to work towards some sort of agreement because of the recognition that public health is everybody’s concern and we’re stronger together as partners,” Tufton said.
Tufton said the discussions included, among other things, health information systems, with Jamaica looking to roll out such systems in more health facilities across the island.
Capacity building and the issue of mental health are also areas in which Jamaica could benefit from a partnership with Manitoba, Tufton said.
Gordon, who was born in Ocho Rios, St Ann, but left Jamaica at age five, noted that both her native land and Manitoba face similar challenges as it relates to the health sector.
“Nursing shortages, inability to register individuals through our colleges, individuals leaving for other countries – the United States, UK (United Kingdom) – leaving the profession,” she pointed out.
“So the challenges are not unique to Jamaica or just Manitoba, Canada. It’s being seen globally, but we can learn from each other. We are stronger together and so we have to talk about how we can collaborate and how we can partner. I’m very pleased to hear some of these strategies that Jamaica has used in terms of partnerships with other countries,” she added.
Gordon said she was looking forward mostly to the sharing of information, expertise, and knowledge, among the two regions.