Tufton eyeing 2022 resumption of work on western children’s hospital
HEALTH AND Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton is hopeful that the construction of the Western Children and Adolescents Hospital, which is being built on the grounds of the Cornwall Regional Hospital, in Montego Bay, will restart in 2022 after being stalled as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking at Thursday’s contract-signing ceremony between the Ministry of Health & Wellness and engineering firm M&M Jamaica, Tufton said discussions on an exact timeline will have to be held with China, which is funding the project and providing the manpower for its construction.
“We have the Western Children and Adolescents Hospital that is under construction that has stopped since the onset of COVID-19, and we are hoping to start that again early in the new year. I do not think China is fully back to normal, so we now have to work with them on a timeline to try and get that sorted out,” said Tufton.
“... When COVID struck, they had issues with the shipment of items and people coming and going. The project was closed down because of that, and now it is for them to remobilise,” he further explained.
Ground was broken for the Western Children and Adolescents Hospital on October 23, 2019. It is expected to complement the Kingston-based Bustamante Hospital for Children by providing increased access to specialised paediatric and adolescent care. It was previously slated for completion by May this year, but that deadline was pushed back because of the pandemic.
On completion, the six-storey hospital will have a 220-bed capacity and an in-house pharmacy, an emergency room, and a dialysis room, plus administrative offices, a food court, and accommodation for employees.
The Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Mount Salem, St James, is itself undergoing rehabilitation work to correct a number of faults since a noxious fumes crisis in 2016.
“You are going to have two active construction sites and an active hospital at the same site,” said Tufton. “You have the Western Children and Adolescents Hospital, which is a six-storey active site, and you have the rehabilitation of a 10-storey building [the CRH main building], and then you have accident and emergency, inpatient care, dialysis, and all the services of a hospital on the same site.”