Patients with lighter complexions are treated with more favour than those with darker hues when seeking medical attention in public hospitals and clinics, anecdotal reports by doctors show, raising concerns that the health of Jamaica’s black...
Parents of hundreds of babies born in 2018 are in the dark over whether their children have the sickle-cell trait or the full-blown disease because public hospitals were hobbled by inadequate supplies to test for the blood disease, which can cause...
Healthcare providers are allowing personal prejudice and class bias to influence their recommendations for tubal ligation, with women living with HIV and disabilities, the prime victims of social and cultural stigma, some stakeholders say. In a...
Heath professionals are urging the Government to review the no-user-fee policy for public health institutions as a shortage of funds is restricting the range and quality of services many facilities can provide. Speaking at a recent Gleaner Editors...
Gang initiation has been fingered as one of the chief factors fuelling the high rate of traffic fatalities across the western Jamaica parish of Westmoreland, as bikers are goaded into deathly stunts and dares to claim kinship and bragging rights in...
The two-day weekend is the most dangerous time to be travelling on Jamaican roads, with Saturday and Sunday accounting for more than a third of traffic fatalities in the first five months over a six-year span. The revelation indicates that...
Driven by the warning echoed in the African proverb ‘The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people’, Dr Taniesha Burke is on a mission to strengthen parent-child relationships one household at a time. “Many of the challenges that society...
Jamaicans are insisting on arming themselves with defensive weapons and are even finding more creative ways to bring them into the country, says the deputy commissioner in charge of border protection at the Jamaica Customs Agency, Alwyn Nicely. The...
Jamaican women as young as 19 years old are exploring the option of tubal ligation, or ‘tie-off’, but most local doctors are unwillingly to operate, saying they are not old enough to validate the life-altering surgical procedure. Tubal ligation,...
Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community are insisting that they be included in national campaigns that focus on the protection of the rights of the vulnerable in society. Speaking at a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last...
In the wake of fallout from get-rich-quick scheme Loom, which emerged in the island last year, and its collapse, Jamaica’s investments watchdog has warned locals not to be duped into Ponzis whose chief solicitors are high-profile professionals....
The St James Municipal Corporation is pressing ahead with plans to bulldoze a cemetery along Jimmy Cliff Boulevard in the western resort city of Montego Bay and turn it into a parking lot. The move is aimed at giving the Hip Strip a new lease on...
Having been dubbed a slow learner and failed every course in her second semester at university, ace researcher Dr Theresa Rambaran is passionate about seeing more girls proving their mettle in the field of science, technology, engineering and...
Jamaican women are increasingly taking personal security into their own hands, arming themselves with generally non-lethal devices such as stun guns and pepper spray, even in contravention of the law. Though both items are restricted under the...
Amid concerns that inmates are contracting HIV at an alarming rate, the chairman of the federation that represents rank-and-file correctional officers has denied that Jamaican prisons are victims of a culture of rape, blaming the prevalence of...
Moses ‘Rice’ Treston was serving a 15-year sentence because of his love affair with guns at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre when a riot erupted in August 1997 over word that condoms would be dispensed throughout the prison community....
One of Jamaica’s leading groundwater experts is seeking to assure residents terrified about the public-health dangers of proposed cemeteries that all sites undergo rigorous inspections and analyses before the green light is given. The country’s...
Jamaica has only a quarter of the minimum designated land space it should have for burying the dead, sparking concern among environmental and planning officials that more families should cremate their relatives or find other alternatives to...
While the overwhelming number of Jamaicans receive their immunisation shots early, a fringe anti-vaccination movement, including some Rastafarians, insist that they will not submit to state policy. According to the Immunisation Regulations of 1986...
Expectant mothers are expressing concern that in addition to taking basic items for their newborns, they have been pressed to provide supplementary supplies, such as enemas and incopads, that should be made available by hospitals. Enema, a fluid...
Inmates inside Jamaica’s prisons are contracting HIV at an alarming rate according to a 2018 study. Concern is growing among experts who say that upon release from prison, ex-cons engage in sexual relationships with women who have no knowledge of...
Director of medical services at the Department of Correctional Services, Dr Donna-Michelle Royer-Powe, said she is not alarmed that the prevalence rate among inmates in Jamaican prisons is higher than the general population’s, as this is a global...
Last weekend when Howard Harvey collected his Doctor of Education degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one couldn’t have dreamed that the one-time windscreen wiper would achieve one of education’s highest honours. Back in...
Just days after the leader of the popular ‘British Link-up Crew’, Owen ‘Roy Fowl’ Clarke, was buried, another member, Alphanso ‘Oney British’ Harriott, was shot and killed on Mountain View Avenue in St Andrew on Friday night. A report from the...
The Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) is bracing for a rush on the lender from entrepreneurs wanting to break into the market in the wake of a boost in loan funding and tax cuts that take effect on Monday. Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke...
