Health ministry targets specialist nurse shortfall while UHWI ex-chair defends tenure before PAC

Health and Wellness Minister Christopher Tufton says citizens should notice stronger hospital staffing within the next few months as the administration tackles a shortfall he put at about four hundred specialist nurses after Jamaica’s medical cooperation with Cuba wound down.

To bridge the gap, officials are interviewing seventy specialist nurses living overseas, have opened an international recruitment desk inside the ministry, and have signed memoranda of understanding with India, Ghana and Nigeria covering recruitment and training support. Mr Tufton said talks continue with Apollo Health System, an Indian medical technology group, while more than forty Cuban physicians have taken up new direct contracts locally and some Cuban nurses have signalled interest in returning.

Former University Hospital of the West Indies board chairman Wayne Chai Chong, appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday, defended decisions taken on his watch. He said the board met inherited weaknesses in governance, procurement and payroll oversight, and lacked operational and strategic plans when it arrived. PAC chair Julian Robinson pressed on alleged ghost payments and audit follow-through; former audit committee chair Katherine Park-Thwaites said the board ordered a full external payroll review because an internal audit had sampled only three months and full records needed more than one year of line-by-line checking.

The health minister also outlined wider “care” initiatives: fifty million dollars to train unpaid family caregivers, proposed lifestyle clinics in each health region to tackle obesity and related illness, and a planned national task force on fertility and responsible parenting spanning several ministries, finance, education, business, academia and civil society. He stressed cabinet must still agree any fertility strategy and that government is not asking people to have children for statistics, but to make family life affordable and supported.

Veteran broadcaster Fae Ellington used a separate segment to caution that explicit lyrics riding the revived hill-and-gully rhythm risk disrespecting Jamaican folk heritage. She credited producer Stephen McGregor for modernising the tradition yet warned that crude verses amount to “desecration” if listeners ignore history, and she urged artists, politicians, companies, churches and teachers to lift cultural standards.

In the arts lane, Cross Links Productions and Dreads Productions are staging fundraiser show “Undercover Craziness,” a comedy-drama on hidden mental-health struggles, this Sunday 17 May at 5:00 p.m. at Johnny’s Place, 35 Don Robin Avenue, Kingston; tickets cost three thousand five hundred dollars, with proceeds aiding the Audience of One youth worship project that heads to Connecticut on 11 July. Writer-director Raheim Shepherd developed the piece while at Excelsior Community College and psychologists vetted terminology.

Author Tammy Taylor discussed “My Jamaican ABC,” an activity book from Little World Learners Hub that weaves patty stalls, porridge and other local touchstones into letter lessons she sells online to nudge screen-heavy children toward cultural literacy.

Guidance counsellor Camille K. Brown of Half-Way Tree Primary School highlighted rising childhood anxiety linked to community violence, citing a 2021 Caribbean Policy Research Institute report on toxic stress, and promoted her companion workbook for carers, stressing parents should “listen to understand, not to respond.”

Jamaica Chess Federation tournament chair Warren Elliot reported hundreds of juniors contesting the National Age Group Championships at the National Arena, with new national titlists including under-eighteen champion Kaya Gale, under-fourteen title-holder Vishnav, under-twelve girls’ champion Noel Noble and former age-group winner Khalil Davy; Amber Group backed the event, and arbiters in yellow bibs policed play like referees.