In this March 2019 JIS photo, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton (right); and Quantity Surveyor at RVM Cost Consultant, Rudal McFarlane (left), look as Regional Director, Western Regional Health Authority Errol Greene directs their attention to something, during a tour of the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James to review rehabilitation work.
Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton and contractors involved in works at the Cornwall Regional Hospital are slated to have a no-holds-barred meeting at 10 a.m. Monday after both sides traded blame for the bungled renovation of the Type A St James facility. Tufton, speaking at a
Gleaner Editors Forum recently, said the Government would be putting the next phase of renovations to international tender, citing inexperience as the key factor for a slew of project overruns by locals.
Histopathology lab opens at Mandeville Hospital jamaicaobserver.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jamaicaobserver.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Commencing next year, surgical specimens and biopsies for patients at the Mandeville Regional Hospital will no longer have to be sent to Cornwall Regional Hospital for processing, following the opening of the Histopathology Laboratory on Thursday.
This is expected to significantly reduce waiting time for test results, and will serve the parishes of Clarendon, Manchester and St Elizabeth.
The laboratory was built through the collaborative effort of the Lions Club of Mandeville, the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund and the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA).
Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton thanked the partners for their joint effort, dating back to 2017, which mobilised more than $80 million towards the delivery of the lab.
DR CHRISTOPHER Tufton, the health minister, is causing a lot of people to reconsider their perception of him as a quick study. It has taken him all of three years, the expenditure of more than a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, plus the help of high-powered analysts to conclude that Jamaican architects, engineers and contractors cannot build hospitals. More likely, he has misdiagnosed the problem.
In other words, while they had a notion of what was to be done, Dr Tufton and his staff at the health ministry mischaracterised what was required at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay, St James, leading to an imprecise terms of reference, and, ultimately, a lot of time-wasting and costly, unproductive outcomes. Or put differently, no matter how long ago Jamaica constructed its last hospital, it could not be difficult for properly briefed and appropriately resourced builders to make themselves
Dr Morais Guy
Shadow Minister of Health and Wellness, the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Dr Morais Guy has accused the Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Christopher Tufton, of trying to shift the blame for the protracted delays in completing restoration work at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in St James to incompetent local contractors.
Recently, Tufton said he will have to look overseas for the requisite expertise in order to get the job done.
However, Guy is having none of that.
Rather, the opposition spokesman is insisting that Tufton “erred when he ascribed blame for the delay in the rehabilitation of the CRH on the lack of capacity and technical know-how of the local contractor and in urging a case for foreign expertise”.