Amid major ongoing work to upgrade and expand hospitals and health centres across the country, the Government will be establishing a $1-billion Health Infrastructure Maintenance Fund (HIMF) to see to the upkeep of equipment in health facilities.

This was announced by Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton on Tuesday during his contribution to the 2026-27 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives.

“We cannot make the same mistake as in the past where we build infrastructure and not maintain it,” Tufton said, while describing the creation of the HIMF as a “more systematic and structured approach to public health infrastructure”.

Tufton explained that the fund will be financed through a percentage of the health budget dedicated to a process of routine and unexpected maintenance through a series of specific initiatives involving establishing baseline inventory logging, establishing routine maintenance schedules and outsourcing the monitoring and maintenance of our health infrastructure, with a focus on mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and air conditioning or HVAC and elevator services.

“The intention is to develop operational manuals and a terms of reference and performance criteria with critical success factors and outsource the routine maintenance of these specific functions for our health facilities,” said the minister.

He shared that the preparatory work has already commenced under the Health Infrastructure Planning and Project Management Division in the ministry and the former regional director of the Western Regional Health Authority, St Andrade Sinclair, has been reassigned to the ministry’s head office to develop this new function.

“We expect to use this financial year to complete the work for full roll-out next financial year, based on a free pilot this year. Approximately $1 billion has been earmarked in this year’s budget for this new function. We must eliminate the unexpected breakdowns of our health facilities because we fail to plan,” Tufton said.

— Lynford Simpson