MINSTER of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton announced that 23 of 26 hospitals in Jamaica are back to normal operations after facing the impact of Hurricane Beryl, but noted that there is still work to be done towards restoration efforts for the Black River, Noel Holmes, and Falmouth hospitals.

Speaking at a press conference held at the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Tufton said that these three hospitals are still currently in emergency mode due to the severe impact Hurricane Beryl had on their facilities and operational services, including inadequate water supply.

“The NWC (National Water Commission) is providing water and they have been cooperative. Where they have an issue is with electricity generation, which requires the pump to pump the water, but in fairness, where we have that issue, trucking normally takes place but it sometimes not as predictable to plan on trucking of water to take on certain services,” he explained.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness Dunstan Bryan said the Falmouth Hospital will be back to full operation within the next two weeks as work is in progress to fix damages to the hospital’s operation theatre’s roof.

He explained that for the Black River Hospital, the main issue affecting operations is the lack of access to electricity.

“The hospital requires the support systems, electricity and water and in the Black River Hospital there are issues, in terms of electricity, that does not allow us to have full operation so when we talk about emergency mode it’s just that we are not able to provide elective surgeries, for example, and so we have to do just the emergency operations,” Bryan said.

In the meantime, Tufton said that efforts have been made to relocate operations of the most severely affected health centres to continue to provide health-care services despite the damage to infrastructure.

“We have made efforts to relocate where we can’t operate within that same facility, so health centres like Southfield in St Elizabeth and Newell in the south-west, we have found alternative locations. So, what we will do is to communicate with persons in those communities on the ground so that they know where the service is while we deal with the immediate repairs,” Tufton said.

Additionally, he announced that with the Cabinet’s approval, approximately $1.7 billion will be committed to the first phase of a three-phase plan to bring all health facilities back into full operation within six months.

He explained that the other two phases will include a six-to-12 month initiative to repair damaged sections of buildings that do not affect operations and a two-year medium- and long-term plan “to make the facilities resilient to natural disasters like hurricanes and meet the business continuity standards that is required”.

However, he noted that only the first phase will be undertaken within the current financial year.

Tufton announced that based on the last two weeks of assessment, approximately 23 per cent (82) of health facilities sustained major structural damages.

“Of the total major damage sustained, 41 per cent impacted. A number of our facilities have lost their roof, for those that have been impacted which has led to water intrusion within the building and of course contributed to damage to a number of items. Impacts to windows and doors as well as electrical supplies were also identified among the major damaged health facilities; it’s to be noted that 76 per cent of total cost for the rehabilitation of health systems are in the Southern Regional Health Authority, where health facilities sustained major structural damage,” he said.