Allwood-Anderson

After an emergency meeting yesterday, the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) called on Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer to promptly diffuse a brewing controversy between public-health nurses and top-ranking officials in the ministry.

The call follows a Sunday Gleaner exclusive revealing the ministry's intention to launch an investigation into allegations of wanton abuse and mismanagement of an on-call payment facility, specially approved by the finance ministry to compensate public-health nurses and other health workers for the extra work they were expected to perform during the malaria outbreak in 2006.

Nurses at risk

In a release issued yesterday, Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the NAJ, said the public-health nurses have been placed at risk.

"The Nurses Association of Jamaica following a meeting with the public health nurses Special Interest Group is calling on the minister of health for a speedy intervention into the erroneous and baseless information about public-health nurses in The Sunday Gleaner of August 2 titled 'Malaria breeds money'," read a section of the association's release.

The NAJ also called for a public apology and a retraction from Dr Sheila Campbell-Forrester, the health ministry's chief medical officer, who told The Sunday Gleaner that a probe would be conducted to determine if there was an abuse of the special 'malaria money' mechanism. When contacted yesterday, Dr Campbell-Forrester told The Gleaner that she had no comment.

It is alleged that approximately $1 billion was paid out under the special-payment mechanism, long after the spread of the vector-borne disease had been contained. In addition, the money was paid to many public-health nurses who had not dealt with a single case of the disease.

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com