Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton has pushed back strongly at Opposition criticism of the health sector, declaring that it has never been in better shape.

At the same time, Tufton is beseeching Jamaicans to “stay the course” with the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government so it can continue its work to improve the sector.

“The Opposition would like the Jamaican people to believe that they, finally, in 2025, have the answers to the challenges in public health,” Tufton said Tuesday in his contribution to the 2025/26 Sectoral Debate in Parliament.

“They frame their conversation in isolation of the context of where we are coming from, where we are now after nine years as Government, and the vision and plans we have for the future, as reflected in our 10-year strategic plan for health tabled in 2019. They also conveniently ignore current plans being implemented to improve the system after decades of neglect,” Tufton said.

“It’s a self-serving, deceptive, and dishonest narrative,” he argued.

Using 2015, the year before the People’s National Party (PNP) was voted out of office, Tufton urged Jamaicans to “cast your minds back to 2015 and just look at how they [PNP] left the health system. Simply put – broken”.

He said the news headlines that year told tales of woe and despair, but not the whole story.

He reminded that in 2016/17 the budget for capital projects in health was $1.88 billion, while the staffing budget was $31.12 billion.

“This year, 2025/26, health’s budget for capital projects is up to $10.18 billion, a more than five-fold increase from 2015, and from $6.93 billion in the last financial year (2024/25). The staffing budget stands at $93.77 billion, up from $33.82 billion in 2016/17,” noted Tufton.

“There can be no question that this Administration is making a sincere and tangible attempt to improve our public health services, and certainly better than any attempt before 2015. There are still challenges, but we are better off than we were back in 2015. We must stay the course,” he said.

Pointing to how Jamaicans were benefiting directly from the improvements, the health and wellness minister stated that in 2015 there were limited programmes to address the prevailing issues in health. He said the National Health Fund (NHF), over the past nine years, has been expanded significantly to support Jamaicans.

“One significant example is the NHF’s provision of coverage for only two cancers in 2015 — breast cancer and prostate cancer. Today, the NHF provides coverage for five cancers — lung cancer, colorectal cancer and multiple myeloma, in addition to breast cancer and prostate cancer,” said Tufton.

He said it was important to note that the subsidy for breast cancer receptor studies has increased from $4,800 to $12,500, “even as we have introduced a $1,300 subsidy for pap smears for women ages 21 to 64”.

“And our men have not been left behind. Today, we have also expanded the $1,600 subsidy for PSA [prostate-specific antigen] tests to include men ages 40-75. Further, the agency has also expanded its coverage from some 16 conditions in 2015/16 to 24 conditions in 2024, including attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), lupus, Parkinson’s disease and thyroid disease”.

“To punctuate the point, the NHF last year filled nearly three million prescriptions for Jamaicans, compared to less than one million in 2015,” Tufton continued. He also highlighted that in 2015/2016 the NHF spent $3.66 billion on drugs dispensed through its Pharmacy Services Division, which oversees 106 Drug Serv pharmacies across the island. This figure increased to $9.81 billion in 2024/25. The total drug expenditure over the period from 2015/2016 to 2024/2025 amounts to $64.98 billion.

“We are better off today than we were in 2015! We must stay the course,” Tufton insisted.

The minister also addressed comments made by Opposition Leader Mark Golding during his contribution to the Budget Debate in March. Golding said the PNP, if it forms the Government after the upcoming general election, will improve primary care, with a focus on building out health centres.

Said Tufton, “This is a good thought, but has he made any effort to see what we have been doing?

“We are adding more services at the community or primary level, including adolescent health and elderly health, rehabilitative and palliative care, as well as ophthalmological and audiometric screening — together with dentistry, diabetic retinopathy, laboratory services, among others.

“It is not by chance that we are getting more visits to our health centres. We must stay the course,” he reiterated.

Tufton emphasised that his ministry was improving the physical and information, communication and technology infrastructure at health centres. He said the most significant build-out is taking place through a collaboration between the Government, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Union, with the implementation of the Health Systems Strengthening Programme (HSSP).

Under the HSSP, 13 health centres and hospitals are being upgraded and equipped with fully-digitised patient records and modern diagnostics machinery.