Dear Editor,

The following is an open letter to Minister of Health Horace Dalley:

The Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC) has noted your approach and statement of commitment to address the breaches and deficiencies in the health sector. Like other citizens, we share a deep concern that these be addressed urgently, since the harshest, lingering effects of the current situation fall mainly on women and children who are the main users of the nation’s health-care service.

We propose that the approach to addressing the current weaknesses, including planning long term for sustainable development of the health sector, should ensure, among other things, that there is the requisite expertise, managerial experience and deep understanding of health-care processes and of patients’ rights among its employees. It is especially expected that these attributes and competencies will be found in the leadership of the sector.

In this regard, we are deeply concerned that the appointment of new members to boards of the Western Regional Health Authority and to the University Hospital of the West Indies shows scant regard for the principle of ensuring the participation of women as key stakeholders. As it is, what we see is that on the Western Regional Authority women are a mere 10 per cent of members appointed and at the UHWI there is one woman and five men named to the board! This is totally unacceptable and flies in the face of commitments made, for example, in the National Policy on Gender Equality (NPGE).

Best practice for reform of the health sector does not rest on boards “being led by men of substance with reputation of getting things done”, as stated in The Gleaner Editorial of November 18 but, among other things, on commitment to and practice of a human-rights based approach to health sector reform.

Among the cardinal principles of this approach are securing the rights to participation and accountability. The desirability for the participation of private sector male leaders must therefore be combined equally with competent and committed participation of competent women as well as civil society stakeholders in driving health sector reform.

The national outrage over these many months about the health sector is directly linked, among other things, to Jamaica’s failure to achieve the 2015 target of reducing child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by 75 per cent. In order to address not only this long-standing issue, but wider development planning in the health sector, the “all-society approach” of which you speak must become a reality.

We therefore look forward to civil society, and women’s organisations in particular, being involved in conversations around the reform of a sector in which the vast majority of workers are women.

We also call on you to correct the composition of the boards so far named, as well as those in future, and ensure that the principles of the agreed NPGE policy are upheld. We urge you to go even further and guarantee boards are composed of no less than 40 per cent and no more than 60 per cent of either sex.

WROC, like many other bodies within the women’s sector, is fully supportive of the thrust towards people-centred reform and wish you all the best in your endeavours.

Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre Limited

Kingston 5

admin@wrocjamaica.org