GOVERNMENT, over the next 18 months, will be spending $1 billion to “refresh” the look and feel of primary health-care facilities across the island.

According to Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, the initiative, dubbed ‘Operation Refresh’, is aimed at improving the credibility of health centres by standardising their appearance, and in doing so, transforming how people perceive them.

“We’re going to refresh our health centres, our clinics, our primary health-care facilities. What this will include is improving or continuing to improve health centres that are not looking very good. We have 325 of them; we have done a lot of work on a lot of them. But we have now developed a model where we will standardise signage, standardise colour codes, improve waiting areas, both for patients and staff, and ensure that our community health centres regain the credibility that it requires for persons to go there before they go to hospital,” Dr Tufton said during his contribution to the 2024/25 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Dr Tufton said the upgrades will include, where necessary, adding sustainable features like solar panels for energy efficiency, air conditioning and improved sanitary conveniences for a more comfortable visit.

He said that the second component of Operation Refresh will be driven by the enhanced role of community health aides.

“We have some 2,200 community health aides and they are the first point of contact with the citizens and the health centre. It’s like the extension officer in the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), they are the ones who go and check with the farmers. In this case, the community health aides, if there’s a dengue outbreak during COVID, they are the ones who lead the charge under the supervision of the primary health-care nurse. We are redefining the scope and the job definition of our community health aides as part of [the] compensation review and you will see community health aides being more active and present at a community level,” he said.

The health minister said he would like to see this enhanced interaction in the community manifested through, for example, increased home visits with the elderly who often have difficulty seeking medical care outside their homes.

“I’d like to see community health aides visiting the old lady in the home who had a stroke and need somebody to help them to turn or take your medication or just somebody to talk to. I’d like to see a community health aide with a tablet or iPad, who can dial up the doctor and do a remote consultation between the doctor and the patient, so that the patient does not have to leave his home, of which some of them do with great difficulty,” said the minister. The patients, he added, would feel a sense of confidence that the community health aide is their friend, not just their health advisor to support and to give them what is necessary reducing the crowding out of both health centres and hospitals or the deterioration of health conditions because individuals don’t want to leave their home.

In the meantime, Dr Tufton said Cabinet has approved a new primary health-care model which will see 370 more doctors being hired in the primary health-care system.

“That’s a good thing because it means when people turn up at a clinic, if they never used to see a doctor, they will now see a doctor and they can access more curative services right in their community rather than travelling to the hospital. But more than that, the new system will address a number of issues.

“Divided into community, district and comprehensive health centres, it will look at not just health promotion and education, but screening, prevention and treatment, routine medicals, special clinics for adolescent, elderly, men’s, and women’s health, rehabilitative and palliative care, ophthalmology and audiometric screening. In other words, our health centres are going to be positioned in a manner that will give them greater value for the people in the communities where they are,” he said.