ST JAMES, Jamaica —Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has revealed a next step in the process in dealing with health centres impacted by the passage of Hurricane Melissa.

Tufton, who was speaking over the weekend at a press conference in Montego Bay, said that the ministry is advancing the process of reviewing the structural integrity of 105 health centres that were in the hurricane zone.

“The intention, and I think we’re almost there, is to, now that we have, in the immediate aftermath, created makeshift arrangements for the services at the primary level to be supported, we are now going into those 105 health centres to examine their structural integrity,” he revealed.

“We’re hoping to conduct that arrangement over the next three months, and then the intention is to engage a range of contractors with very specific directives around the rebuild,” he also stated.

He said that the ministry is set to work with a number of engineers who will go into these facilities and carry out the assessments.

“I think the ministry is engaging about four or five engineering firms to go and examine them to see that the walls are sound, the roof can be restored, if we have the slab as opposed to zinc roof, what kind of reinforcement is required, and the QS, the quantities or costs associated with those 105,” he disclosed.

Following the passage of the category 5 storm, health centres across the western belt of the island suffered varying degrees of damage, from total devastation to sections being removed.

Health centres have become part of the crux of the health delivery, especially in rural areas, and the ministry is now looking at putting the centres back in a much-improved state.

“The intention is to rebuild guided by the protocols of our SMART Health Facility, which we have a number of health centres that we have done so with. You may recall the SMART Health Facility was a co-sponsorship of Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the UK government,” he said.

He explained that this is already in place in Manchester, where that was built to withstand “stronger disaster, hurricanes”.

“In terms of how the roofs are constructed, generator capacity, water catchment systems, disability access, and I could go on,” he said.

“The intention, therefore, is to ensure that those 105 facilities, once we start that rebuild by midyear, will be built back in a way that will give them a lot more resilience against any future disaster,” he insisted.

However, he reiterated that they still have to do the critical pre-work, and that process is about to commence with the assessment.

He also provided an update on the hospitals impacted by the storm in the western end.

“The hospitals that have been damaged, contractors are actively engaged, just as Cornwall [Regional], Noel Holmes, St Elizabeth. Black River, I went there last week. I know that A&E is complete, and they’re working on the two main wards,” he stated.

“Noel Homes, similarly so, they’re doing a lot of work there, and Savanna-la-Mar and Falmouth,” he added.