New children’s hospital, and healthcare cost
THE GOVERNMENT is deserving of commendation in recently being able to break ground for the new 220-room sevenstorey hospital for children in Montego Bay. The facility, which is slated for completion in 2021, has been on the drawing board from former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s visit to China some years ago to seek funding for the idea.
There are some important points to note from the groundbreaking ceremony for Jamaica’s development process.
The first is that the country was, once again, demonstrating political maturity with the decision to continue with the project, even after a change in administration. While we should never rule out the need to review, and, if necessary, shelve bad projects or ideas, we are cautiously optimistic that the country has moved past the phase of abandoning useful national projects for purely partisan reasons. Hopefully, the country has moved permanently on to a path of consensus and continuity where it is in the national interest.
The second takeaway to note is that the hospital is being built by a gift of US$43 million from the Chinese government. While Jamaica is grateful to the people of China for another generous bit of infrastructure, we should never lose sight of the fact that the country is not saving and investing, or reforming quick enough, to achieve faster growth and thus be able to sustain itself. This self-sustainability is the stirring vision of economic independence that Finance Minister Nigel Clarke likes to remind the country about.
Thirty years ago, China’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was below that of Jamaica’s. Today, Jamaica’s per capita income, at US$5,000, lags behind that of China, which is just above US$9,000. While China remains a developing country, the wide-ranging economic reforms and opening up the country to global trade, as well as the implementation of statedirected investment, all drove the achievement of double-digit GDP growth rates for most of the last 30 years. There is no fundamental impediment, except bad policy choices, that should stop Jamaica from achieving a growth rate significantly above the average one per cent per annum for the last 30 years.
The minister of health, Dr Christopher Tufton, at the groundbreaking ceremony, drew attention to this lack of growth. Dr Tufton stated a hope that this new hospital “... is only the start of the badly needed infrastructure build-out that is required to renew public health services in our country, and to provide what, frankly speaking, is a gap between the demands on the system and our capacity over the years to provide for those demands.”
At the same ceremony, Prime Minister Andrew Holness expressed confidence that with the building of the new hospital, Jamaica’s ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI) will improve by at least three places. We are sure the PM knows that variables such as the levels of violence, income growth, quality of schooling, availability of a clean environment, etc, far outweigh the building of a hospital in determining the HDI of a country. These are just a few of the areas Jamaica has to tackle urgently.
HEALTHCARE AND COSTS
The new hospital will be a significant contributor to the reduction in the cost of seeking medical care in western Jamaica. It is widely accepted that Jamaicans, particularly the poor, pay far too much out of their pockets to access healthcare. The removal of user fees in the public hospitals, along with the assistance provided by the National Health Fund for a limited set of drugs, is of great help to patients. However, the runaway cost of accessing overall quality healthcare: transportation, waiting, lack of supplies, diagnostic testing, etc, all put a significant burden on the population.
The health sector is one where there are broad areas of consensus over the years about policy, plans, and projects. We need this consensus and continuity to be cemented. This is a sure way of making rapid progress in raising the country’s HDI status.