Edmond Campbell, News Coordinator

Jamaica Labour Party Spokesperson on Industry, Commerce and Investment, Shirley Williams (left), addresses a Gleaner Editors' Forum at the company's North Street head office in central Kingston yesterday. Listening while she makes her point are G2K president Warren Newby (centre) and party general secretary Karl Samuda. -Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

General Secretary of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Karl Samuda, says the party will dismantle the Regional Health Authorities (RHA) if it forms the next government.

Speaking yesterday at a Gleaner Editors' Forum at the newspaper company's head office at North Street, central Kingston, Mr. Samuda said a JLP administration would reform the entire structure of the health service.

He said the current RHAs were not effective and only provided another "layer of bureaucracy that is strangling the whole sector".

In 1997, Parliament passed the National Health Services Act, establishing the health authorities, which provided a separation of operational responsibilities from the Ministry of Health.

The RHAs is made up of the South East Region, which comprises Kingston and St. Andrew, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas; the North East Region consists of St. Ann, St. Mary, and Portland, and the Western Region which covers St. James, Trelawny, Hanover, and Westmoreland. The Southern Region is made up of the parishes of Manchester, Clarendon and St. Elizabeth.

The Act defined the Ministry's role as focusing on policy development, setting standards and monitoring the delivery of health care services, while the health authorities were delegated the responsibility for the actual delivery of health care services.

But Mr. Samuda pointed out that the administrator, matron and the Senior Medical Officer were more efficient at running a hospital than the respective boards that make up the RHAs. "Those three people know more about what is going on in a hospital system than anybody. You could bring five million board people from outside they do not know how to run a hospital as those three people working as a team with the support staff," he maintained.

About two weeks ago nurses at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) became restive after complaining about the lack of health supplies at the facility. They charged that patients' lives were at risk because of the lack of basic medical supplies.

It was later discovered that administrative bungling was to be blamed for the shortage of medical supplies at the hospital. In fact, officials at the Ministry of Health later admitted that workers were unaware that supplies were in the stores at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the JLP has reiterated that if it forms the next government it will remove all fees for health care.

At present, the Portia Simpson Miller-led administration has offeredfree health care to children up to 18 years at all medical facilities, excluding the University Hospital of the West Indies.

Mr. Samuda said that it costs more than $13 billion per annum to fund health care, with the government finding approximately $1.6 billion out of the public purse, while absorbing the additional cost.