MONTEGO BAY, St James – Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has lauded the Seventh-day Adventist Church for accommodating services outsourced from the ailing Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) next door to the West Jamaica Conference auditorium in Mount Salem, since 2017.

“…I also had a meeting with the Seventh-day Adventist leadership in this part of the country and we discussed the issues around the use of the facility. As you know the church is very, very instrumental in providing significant support to the people of St James by allowing their main auditorium in this side of country to be used as a health centre…as a clinic where hundreds go each day for treatment,” Dr Tufton said recently during his first tour of the CRH since the start of the year.

“We expressed our thanks as usual as a Government, but also as a regional authority; as a hospital and the response is usual. It is a recommitment to work with the hospital because as was said by Pastor Samuels, it is really a part of the [church] ministry to help those who are less fortunate…in need, and there is a lot of demonstration of that by making the facility available.”

Rehabilitation work on the Type A facility commenced just over three years ago to address mould and air quality issues, resulting in the relocation of a range of clinical and support services.

The church has also been accommodating the hospital’s laboratory, antenatal clinic, Physiotherapy Department and multiple stations in its auditorium.

President of the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Churches, Pastor Glen Samuels, explained that the church remained devoted to assisting the people in western Jamaica.

“We told him [Dr Tufton] that we remained committed to assisting, and to me it’s not a big deal in wanting to make a public statement out of it. We remain committed to helping the people of the western region,” the clergyman assured.

He noted, however, that it was brought to the attention of the health and wellness minister that the occupation of a section of the facility by the Western Regional Health Authority has stifled the church’s ability in offering its skills training programme.

“We levelled with him that, that would be our only pressing concern and he was really open and understanding as we talked on the matter,” Samuels said.

“I told him that we remained committed notwithstanding the challenges. We haven’t had any unruly behaviour…once or twice, but that has settled down. It is the building near to my office complex because that is the one attached to our social intervention programme for unattached youths, not only unattached, but our skills programme and a lot of other programmes.”

Dr Tufton acknowledged that discussions were held concerning the church’s concerns.

“We have discussed a few logistics issues in terms of timelines and some of the other issues that are necessary to ensure that the work continues on the ground, but I am very satisfied having had those discussions that there is a commitment to continue to assist; to continue to provide the leadership that has been provided, and to continue the collaboration with the clinical team,” the health and wellness minister stated.

He explained that the renovation work at CRH has not halted the services that were offered at the facility.

“Cornwall Regional as a clinical service provider has not budged in terms of those services. Again, I keep saying to people ‘you must make the distinction between the building and the service provision’. And the work is going on…I just looked at the statistics on the number of surgeries, they did over 1.3 million lab tests last year, they would have done thousands of emergency surgeries, elective surgeries. They continue to do great work in terms of oncology or cancer treatment, dialysis has expanded and I could go on. So from the service perspective we have to continue to recognise and salute the work that has been done on the ground and being done and last year was no exception,” he argued.