Tufton: We should celebrate the essentiality of Cornwall Regional Hospital

WESTERN BUREAU:

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton is continuing to double down in his defence of the Cornwall Regional Hospital’s [CRH] rehabilitation project, with his latest remarks suggesting that residents of western Jamaica should be thankful for the effort that has been spent to restore the problem-plagued hospital.

Addressing a function to celebrate the installation of a new steam boiler at the Savanna-la-Mar Public Hospital in Westmoreland on Friday, Tufton said that focus should be placed on applying the lessons learned from the CRH’s restoration process, which has been ongoing since noxious fumes affected operations at that facility in 2017.

“No government from the past 20 years, which means the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party, can claim credit for doing what needed to be done at the CRH except this government. We were prepared to put our money where our mouth is. We were not just prepared to criticise the other side [the parliamentary Opposition] for the neglect. We were prepared to take the bull by the horns and fix the hospital once and for all,” Tufton said resolutely.

“Frankly speaking, what the people of western Jamaica should be doing, and I am being presumptuous, but I say so with respect, is that we should be celebrating that critical recognition of the essentiality of the CRH to the lives of people in western Jamaica and that we are willing to put money and expertise behind it to create a facility that will work for the people. We do not want to go back there again because it is a journey. What we want to do is learn the lessons from this,” Tufton added.

There has been much public discussion concerning the CRH rehabilitation project, particularly in light of last week Tuesday’s revelation from the Ministry of Health that the project’s third and final phase is now budgeted at $14.1 billion, up from the previously estimated cost of $10.5 billion in October. The work is projected for completion in March 2025.

The current $14.1 billion budget includes $10.5 billion for the construction process, $2.5 billion for new equipment, and $1.1 billion for technical services.

Tufton told Friday’s function that one particular lesson to be derived from the CRH experience is the importance of caring for the country’s infrastructure.

“People must see the healing from the moment they are approaching the hospital. If it looks bad and uninviting, the pain gets worse, but the look and the feel [of the facility] is as good as the treatment should be,” said Tufton. “I am encouraged, and indeed I believe that despite the setbacks, the lessons are more important than the history as we go forward. The lesson is very clear: do not neglect your infrastructure until it is on life support because that is what we did with the CRH.”

The problems at the CRH, which initially came to the fore with complaints of noxious fumes in September 2016, re-emerged to national attention in 2017 when the fumes resulted in services having to be relocated from the hospital’s first three floors.