More than 6oo Jamaicans have been selected for the recently announced $2.5-billion Dr Barry Wint Memorial Scholarship which provides an opportunity for students to have their public health studies financed by the Government.

The 607 recipients will officially be awarded at a function on Friday where Prime Minister Andrew Holness will be the guest speaker.

“They range in about 12 or 13 different disciplines, not just nurses and doctors, but biotech engineers, pharmacists, lab techs; essentially, what we’re doing [is] we’re giving them scholarships up to $1 million a year for up to five years on the basis that they will be bonded to work in public health and that’s part of our retention strategy,” Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton told this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s headquarters in St Andrew.

The scholarship — named in honour of Dr Barry Wint, a former chief medical officer — is a five-year bursary with $500 million set aside each year. Applications were open to Jamaicans pursuing studies in, among other areas, medical technology, human resources for health, medical social work, epidemiology, medical physics, health records management, hospital/health-care management, information systems for health, pharmacy, dentistry, health economics, as well as nursing and medicine.

“Some people are already in the system so they’ll only get it for one year, some people will only get half a million because that’s the cost of what they’re studying, but you can get up to $1 million,” said Tufton.

He said the scholarship is an indication of how serious the Government is taking the challenge of human resource training and retention to meet the future needs of the population.

“Never before, in the history of Jamaica, has one scholarship fund been awarded to so many Jamaicans,” Tufton added.

Beyond this initiative, the minister said the Government is also engaged in discussions with The Philippines, India, Nigeria, and Cuba to recruit health-care workers as they seek to address the present gap in the health-care system created as a result of worker migration.

“What we have decided to do is that we need to train more, but we also need to join in the process of recruiting from overseas where we have gaps, because one of the biggest fears that I have personally, and I believe the team should have too, is to build out hospitals and have nobody to put in them,” he told the Exchange.

Dr Tufton admitted that there exists a weakness in the Jamaican health-care system due to the migration of health-care workers and said that as the Government seeks to build out and improve public hospitals and health centres, more medical personnel will be needed.

“Over the next year you’re going to see more openings with Western Children and Adolescent Hospital opening; that [hospital] needs about 1,000 people to work. They are slated to open next May. Cornwall [Regional Hospital] will come back on stream, of course, and Spanish Town, in another year and a half, they’ll have another 100 beds and will need a number of nurses, and so on,” he explained.

He added that the construction of a six-storey tower at University Hospital of the West Indies will also create a need for more health-care workers.

“We are going to have to be very strategic and start the planning now to fill the void that currently exists in some instances,” the health and wellness minister said, adding that there will also be an expo later this year to make individuals aware of the various career options available within the health-care system.