Health Minister Horace Dalley has said the health sector will have to find new and creative ways to ensure all deserving Jamaicans gain access to medical benefits under the four-year-old National Health Fund (NHF).

He told an opening ceremony for a refurbished and expanded operating theatre at the Black River Hospital last week that he was bothered by reports of people – particularly in “deep rural Jamaica” – who are not registered because they are unable to access a TRN number or a birth certificate for one reason or another.

“It is a problem, and I have said to my people that we need to find a way. There are persons who need to get the medication on a regular basis, who must be registered for the health fund,” said Dalley.

“We have to find a way as a policy. It must not be left to the whim and fancy of an individual to casually take a decision. We have to sit down and consider how we deal with persons in the system who cannot get a TRN number because they have no birth certificate, and, as a result of that, cannot be registered with the National Health Fund,” he added.

Dalley noted that while the NHF has spent heavily on the development of infrastructure projects in the health sector, its purpose was to “make sure that medication is available to those with chronic diseases, illnesses or conditions”.

He said he was personally committed to ensuring that the “poor especially” who “need the hypertensive drug, who need the diabetes drug” gain “access to these things”.

The NHF, which Dalley said was one of the best government projects of the last two decades, earns $2-billion annually from an excise on the tobacco industry, a percentage of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) contributions, and a special consumption tax.