JMDA seeks minister retract over intern protest remarks

The Jamaica Medical Doctors Association is urging the Minister of Health and Wellness to withdraw what it calls misleading remarks about a recent protest by medical interns, saying the minister wrongly tied the action to a shortage of beds in the Accident and Emergency Department at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

In a Tuesday statement, the association said the June 24 protest involved interns across Jamaica and centred on punishing duty rosters — some lasting more than 48 hours straight — and inadequate on-call sleeping quarters. It insisted interns were not protesting over A&E bed space at UHWI, arguing two separate matters had been conflated, while adding that it supports the hospital protest itself.

The JMDA also warned of a deepening intern shortfall: fewer than 88 doctors graduated this year against a public-system need for more than 160 interns, with some graduates expected to return to countries such as Barbados, the Bahamas and Trinidad. It said long hours raise fatigue risks for patient care, and that an audit of intern sleeping facilities announced earlier should have been finished weeks ago, with findings and a ministry meeting still outstanding. The ministry had not replied to the latest retraction call at the time of the report.

Separately, Agriculture Minister Floyd Green said Jamaica has kept free of outbreaks including cyclosporiasis and aims to stay that way after an intestinal-illness outbreak in the United States, a major import source. He said the Plant Quarantine Division has stepped up checks, noting the island usually supplies most of its own vegetables but may face leafy-green import requests during the dry spell.

A Clarendon family is appealing for help finding 37-year-old Desmond Williams of Terrier Town, Racetrack, Denbigh, missing since July 13. He was last seen leaving home early Saturday in a white shirt, blue jeans and black shoes. Sister Kadisha Williams said he has an unsound mind and may struggle to find his way if taken somewhere unfamiliar, and asked anyone with information to come forward.

The Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation also reported removing unpaid and unapproved signs and billboards across the corporate area, including at Clock Tower Plaza in Half Way Tree. CEO Robert Hill said an unapproved billboard at the entrance to the Jamaica Society for the Blind on Old Hope Road did not belong to the society; the advertiser was told to take it down but did not. Removals are to continue as businesses are pressed to meet signage rules.

Eighteen years on, the July 20, 2008 theft of an estimated 500 truckloads of white sand from Coral Spring Beach in Trelawny remains unsolved, with no arrests and the probe later wound down.