THE Government has announced a $2.5-billion scholarship fund for students pursuing studies in the medical field as part of its training and retention strategy for critical health-care professionals.

At the same time, the Administration is also exploring the possibility of a flexi contract arrangement for people who are trained jointly across jurisdictions, involving institutions outside of Jamaica.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, who made the disclosure during his contribution to the 2024/25 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, said the Barry Wint Memorial Scholarship and Development Fund will be offered over five years at $500 million each year.

He said the scholarships will be open to Jamaicans who are pursuing studies in nursing, medicine, public health, medical technology, epidemiology, health records management, hospital/health-care management, information systems for health, pharmacy, dentistry and health economics.

He said the ministry will also be exploring overseas clinical rotations and remote faculties to expand training in these areas.

“[It] is open to graduate and postgraduate students, and even students who are currently studying can also apply. The ministry’s website will provide more information, and the scholarship will begin September of 2024,” he said.

The health minister said the aim of the scholarship is to ensure that as the Government seeks to transform and build out the health system infrastructure there are adequate medical professionals available to do the level of work required to meet the needs of the populace.

“Unfortunately, we can’t just recruit; we have to now take a vested interest in training and retaining. And so, what the ministry is saying [is] we can’t build hospitals and have nobody to put in them — and that is likely to happen; it happens in other jurisdictions. We can’t be buying diagnostic equipment, digitising, and have no one to operate them. We can’t not have people who can do the analytics — in other words, take the data and analyse it (health economics) in order to tailor our response to the population. And so this scholarship is intended to solve that problem,” he said.

Turning to the flexi contract arrangement being explored, Dr Tufton said he is cognisant of the mass migration of health-care workers but admitted that mobility of labour is a reality and that more has to be done to train and retrain, “including accepting that we are going to train for export and that this will include collaboration with external partners, including institutions outside of Jamaica.

“We take the view that we have experience as a country in Jamaicans working part-time in the developed markets and part-time in Jamaica. Why can’t we do it for a nurse? In other words, if we could establish a flexi contract where a nurse could work five months in the United Kingdom [UK] at a hospital and seven months in Jamaica, the Government should be prepared to give them a contract for the seven-month period so that they enjoy the best of both worlds. Because I do believe that most Jamaicans would prefer to reside here, but if they can earn a little extra money somewhere else, they will do it on a part-time basis and then come back home — and we’re going to be exploring that,” he said.

He said the health profession is a global market that is internationally competitive, pointing out that the United States, Canada, and the UK have waived all the requirements, or most, and are now giving people permanent residence, waiving English exams as well .

“Once you’re a Jamaican and you’re trained in Jamaica as a nurse, particularly a specialised nurse, they will recruit you in some facility somewhere in any of these markets; we can’t stop them,” Tufton said..

Jamaica, he said, now has to adjust and embrace a more aggressive recruitment strategy for health professionals, and look at “how we collaborate in order to train more people, recognising that we’re part of this global community”.

In this regard he appealed to training institutions to take some time to adjust, where necessary, the approach to training.

“Come talk to us. We have started that conversation but we are going to have to find ways, and creative ways, to get more people, more human resources in the system who have the transformation mindset,” he said.