Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton

By Kimone Witter   

The Kingston Public Hospital is back to full operation after non-functioning air conditioning units last week forced the administration to put in contingency measures.

A statement from the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) on February 17 said the affected areas were the Accident & Emergency, main operating theatre, Recovery Room and the Intensive Care Unit.

SERHA said due to the operational challenges it had to consider the transfer of patients to nearby health facilities.

Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton told Radio Jamaica News on the weekend that the issue would be rectified in the coming days.

Speaking on Radio Jamaica’s Hotline on Friday, Dr. Tufton said the delay in fixing the AC units resulted from the service provider, CAC 2000, facing challenges. But the issue was eventually addressed with the help of the overseas manufacturers.  

“I am told that they were back up yesterday evening. And so we will be back up to a good capacity which would then avoid us redirecting some of the elective procedures elsewhere or delaying them. But there was never time when we did not have any functional. It is just that the capacity was reduced because of those issues,” he sought to explain. 

Dr. Tufton said there continues to be issues with local capacity to fix malfunctioning equipment. 

“The local representatives, and I’m not trying not to be overly critical, but the truth is they need to invest more in training their people rather than us waiting on a service provider to come from overseas or indeed to engage them in conversation for technical support,” he suggested.