THE president of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) said the health sector needs at least 10 per cent of the national budget in order to function optimally.

Speaking last Thursday evening during the opening ceremony of the MAJ Symposium at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Dr Alverston Bailey said that the current allocation of 4.4 per cent of the budget is not enough.

“$13.7 billion or 4.4 per cent of the budget is woefully inadequate and we are going to work on the (health) minister to raise it 10 per cent,” he said

He said social inequalities in health including the inability of the poor and vulnerable to access to quality services are of grave concern.

“We anticipate that the government’s removal of user fees for children using public health facilities will be extended to the elderly, the disabled and the mentally challenged,” he added. “Coping in a tight economic environment increases stress for individuals and families, and increase the risk of developing hypertension, other diseases and mental disorder.”

Jamaica, like its international counterparts, is faced with a disease burden that affects the country’s physical, human, and financial resources. For example, it cost the hospitals $907 million in 2003 to care for patients with heart-related diseases, compared to $823 million the previous year.

Among the main risk factors, Dr Bailey said, are obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, stress, smoking and alcohol abuse. He said changing social values and behavioural practices drive the chronic disease epidemic.

In the meantime, Professor Nigel Harris, vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, speaking on the symposium’s theme, “Common diseases: the challenges and strategies in improving treatment outcomes”, said in order to improve treatment outcomes, the disorders which impose the greatest burden to the society must be identified and treated.

He suggested four best practices that could be used as central goals within a health care system that is seeking to improve treatment outcomes for common diseases – identifying the right disorders; identifying the right people with those disorders and affording them appropriate access; providing the right system for delivery of care and having the appropriate number of health care providers with the right knowledge and attributes to provide needed care

“No society, no matter how wealthy, has all the resources to treat all people with all the diseases that affect their population,” he said. “Choices have to be made, and in making those choices, policy makers should ideally be guided by determining what conditions inflict greatest burden on their society and how they might best mobilise scarce resources to get the best results with the resources available.”

Professor Harris said a committe of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, obesity and asthma as some of the diseases which if identified could reduce the burden of disease drastically.

At the same time, he said the creation of an integrated health system could also contribute to the inprovement of treatment outcomes. He noted too, that the introduction of computer systems now offer the possibilty of electronic storage of patient data in manageable forms and for the rapid transfer of this data to appropriate members of the health sector.