HANOVER, Jamaica — Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton has blasted the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) which in recent times has intensified its call for him to resign after 12 babies died from a resistant bacteria at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH).

“I can only wonder whether or not this organisation is not going through a sort of exorcism or purge of their own ghost of 2015,” said Tufton.

He was addressing a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Area Council Four meeting at the Bethel Primary School in Hopewell, Hanover Sunday evening.

Tufton was referring to what is known as the ‘dead baby scandal’ in which 18 pre-term babies in the public health system died.

The then Health Minister, Dr Fenton Ferguson, was removed from his post by the Prime Minister at the time, Portia Simpson Miller after public pressure and strident calls from the then opposition JLP. Now the JLP claims the two situations are different and the party has closed ranks behind Tufton.

Following the recent revelation of the deaths at VJH, Tufton was flayed for failing to advise the nation until after the story became public.

Last week, the PNP led a series of demonstrations across Jamaica as the party intensified its calls for the minister to resign or be fired by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

On Sunday evening a strident Tufton directly addressed the PNP.

“I respect the opinions that you offer and those opinions are important in our democracy but don’t use me to experience your own purging based on your own regrets of some of the decisions that you have taken,” he said.

“The reality is that they have a bigger problem and if I were they— I am not and I am happy I am not— I would seek to address the bigger problem that they have. And, you know what that bigger problem is, the people of Jamaica prefer the leadership of the Andrew Holness administration and what we have provided over the last couple of years,” Tufton said.

He said he has gotten the sense that desperation is setting in within the PNP, “because only desperation could cause someone to gather people together to protest”.

The minister noted that while it is in their right to protest, the opposition runs the risk of “scaring the Jamaican people from visiting our health institutions through false narrative or exaggerated narratives”.

He maintained that the country’s healthcare system is better than it was when the PNP was in power.

“We have been through more trials, tribulations and challenges than they ever went through and we have been able to manage it and to ensure that the Jamaican people are safe. That is why the Jamaican people prefer the Jamaica Labour Party and their leadership and that is the problem that they have,” stated Tufton.

He pointed to the upgrading of hospitals and clinics across the country as proof of the work done by the Andrew Holness-led administration.

Last year, Tufton noted, there were nearly three million visits to public health institutions, approximately 1.6 million of which were to health centres (clinics) and 1.4 million visits to hospitals.

More than 180,000 people were inpatients hospitalised for less than five days because of various ailments. Tufton said 98 per cent were treated in the public health system by Jamaican doctors and nurses and went back home to their loved ones.

“The rest, for whatever reason, were dispatched to the morgue and we regret that but the system works for most of the people most of the time,” he said.

– Anthony Lewis