KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesman on Health, Dr Alfred Dawes, on Monday stood in solidarity with protesting healthcare workers who expressed frustration with the number of challenges facing Jamaica’s public health system.

Speaking at a press conference, Dawes, who is also a medical doctor, said instead of addressing the issues affecting the public health sector, those at the helm have been playing the “blame game.”

“There is a reluctance for the persons where the buck stops to accept responsibility,” he said. “The doctors who have been sitting in the mouldy clinics with fungus coming from the roof tiles; in the hot clinics without a working fan and AC units who are there just so they can see the patients. They are making a sacrifice because it is about the patients, so they try to get the things done…those very persons who have been propping up the system, are now being raked across coals and they are expected to show up for work (tomorrow) and put out as much as they have over the past few years.”

Highlighting that in addition to subpar conditions, healthcare workers have had to “listen to the rhetoric today where it is being said the money that they have asked for repeatedly and being denied is not the problem, instead, they are.” He expressed that the powers that be should now shift their focus and undergo much-needed damage control.

“The powers-that-be now ought to focus on repairing the damaged relationships between themselves and the doctors, the administrators and the nurses, and even patients who have been blamed for their part in this, and see how they can all sit down and work together to stop the slide, because as I said, we are at a tipping point,” he said.

The Jamaica Medical Doctors’ Association, in a press release on Sunday, urged the Ministry of Health and Wellness to take immediate action to address the widespread infrastructural and human resources deficiencies in Jamaica healthcare facilities.