Opposition spokesman on health Dr Alfred Dawes on Monday launched a broadside against the Government for its handling of the health sector, charging that there is high-level corruption in the procurement of inferior, overpriced machinery from China that amounts to a rapacious form of capitalism that is sucking millions of dollars out of the health and wellness ministry.

“There is a pattern here that is emerging, and when you delve deeper you realise that all of these patterns have root causes, and that is what is leading to the collapse of the health sector now,” Dawes, a medical doctor, told journalists at a news conference called by the People’s National Party at the Office of the Opposition Leader in St Andrew.

“This blame game about getting new machines and them breaking down within a short space of time seems like it makes sense until you delve into what types of machines are brought in,” he said.

“What has happened over the years is that the cheapest quality Chinese equipment has been bought, sold to the Ministry of Health at exorbitant mark-ups — over 1,000 per cent. When I hear some of the prices for some of these machines I know that they cost a tenth of what they are being resold for,” added Dr Dawes.

“I’m not against capitalism, but there is a side of capitalism that is rapacious, and it is sucking out money from the Ministry of Health because we are not getting quality for the money that is being spent for a lot of these equipment, and when you bring in these equipment there is no service contract, no maintenance. In no time at all the machines break down and what’s left is a lot of junk in hospital corridors and storerooms,” Dawes said.

He prefaced his criticisms against last week’s firestorm over the postponement of a spinal surgery for an 11-year-old girl at Bustamante Hospital for Children (BHC) in St Andrew because of a failed air-conditioning unit in the operating theatre there.

Last Friday, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton told journalists at a news conference at BHC that arrangements had been made for the surgery to be conducted at University Hospital of the West Indies.

The 11-year-old girl, Ajanae Parchment, had been scheduled for surgery to correct an “aggressive” form of scoliosis. However, her mother, Sandra Aitcheson, was reported by
The Gleaner newspaper as saying that she was told by an orthopaedic surgeon that the procedure could not be conducted because the operating theatre had no air-conditioning.

During the press conference, Jamaican-born orthopaedic surgeon and spine specialist Dr Robert Brady, who headed a medical mission from the United States which was scheduled to conduct the surgery, expressed frustration with some of the health infrastructure challenges he and his team have encountered in the island.

“I come here because I want to help the people… I want to do good, that’s why I come here twice a year… I have been coming here for 20 years. There are clear infrastructure issues that need to be solved,” Dr Brady said after he joined a press conference following completion of one of the scheduled mission surgeries.

In response, Dr Tufton acknowledged that the country has a perennial, systemic problem with the maintenance of equipment and medical plants, but noted that the Government has been spending hundreds of millions to upgrade public health infrastructure.

He again pointed out that, to address some of the issues with poor maintenance, the Government has made the decision, starting in another month, to lease equipment instead of purchasing them.

However, Dr Dawes, in his news conference on Monday, said that any argument about “equipment going down” being “the fault of the administrators for not taking care of them, needs to be taken into consideration” when judgement is cast.

Alleging corruption in the procurement process, Dr Dawes said there is “significant conflict of interest… resulting in companies that are connected to the stakeholders and decision-makers in the procuring entities being awarded contracts”.

“It is this broken procurement system that is manifesting in several ways,” he said.

“It is manifested in the owning of a funeral home by a councillor in the health minister’s constituency, and that funeral home is getting all of the contracts in the South East Regional Health Authority and, therefore, poor people have to travel from KPH (Kingston Public Hospital in downtown Kingston), all the way to Spanish Town to identify and claim the bodies of their loved ones while going through the grieving process, but we hear that the tender process was above board. It looks a way.

“It is a broken procurement process why an electronic health records system could go to tender for $370 million… and when concluded the contract is $800 million and we are told that it is above board.

“It is why a $1.5-million operating bed lasts only three months when that same operating bed, if you were to buy it in China, the cost in Jamaican dollars would be $150,000. We are seeing this rapacious form of capitalism sucking out $140 million out of the Ministry of Health and there is no value for the taxpayers’ dollars,” Dr Dawes charged.

He said, to make matters worse, when legitimate companies provide top-tier equipment there is no maintenance contract or warranty, or if there is a warranty it is breached because there is no scheduled maintenance.

“The system is broken when it comes to maintenance,” Dr Dawes said while lamenting the paucity of the trained mechanical or biomedical engineers which, he said, results in the ministry having to outsource services to private outfits “at exorbitant rates”.

According to Dr Dawes, the health ministry has been “outsourcing every possible thing they can instead of building capacity”.

Warning that there are more equipment breakdowns looming, Dr Dawes further charged that the ministry has concentrated its efforts on saving its image by increasing its marketing spend while the maintenance budget has “gone down”.

In a jab at Dr Tufton, who — in response to heightened criticisms about the state of the sector — on the weekend pledged to name and shame those who drop the ball in their stewardship of resources, Dr Dawes said, the “covering up” and “blame-shifting” must end.