Essay Example: Improving Accessibility to Quality Healthcare in Jamaica

The healthcare profession has grown significantly in Jamaica since independence. In 2019, public healthcare spending was roughly 6% of Jamaica's gross domestic product (GDP), which stood $15.461 billion (Statista, 2020). According to the World Bank statistics on indicators of development, the country’s physician density per 1000 people has grown from 0.39 in 1960 to 1.3 in 2017 (Trading Economics, 2020). Similarly, that of nurses and midwives has grown from 0.08 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2017 (Trading Economics, 2020). By 2016, Jamaica had 8 nursing schools offering baccalaureate, diploma, and certificate courses, and two schools of medicine offering 4-year medical courses (Tomblin Murphy et al., 2016). Despite the many advances that have been made in Jamaica’s healthcare profession, the country still grapples with the challenge of making quality care adequate and accessible to all.

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According to Bourne (2010), Jamaica’s private and public healthcare sectors have grown in almost equal measure in the 21st century. The government largely funds the public healthcare system, where it employs and deploys all medical staff while private practitioners depend exclusively on private sources of funding. The government waived all user fees in public health facilities in 2008 (Bourne, 2010). As a result, the public healthcare sector has been witnessing a growing demand for services, causing significant strain on the public healthcare personnel.

Patients visiting public health facilities have to grapple with problems such as long queues and increased difficulty to get physician appointments. The problem is so severe that there have been claims of people visiting hospitals and staying there until evening but still leaving without seeing a doctor (Casey, 2019). It is not easy to get prescriptions under such conditions. According to Casey (2019), people begin to line up at the pharmacy and out-patient registration bays of public hospitals as promptly as two hours before the official opening time.

The Jamaican government has taken some bold measures to improve the adequacy of quality healthcare for its people. It has charged its Ministry of Health with the administration of the public healthcare system, and regulation of the practice of both private and public healthcare workers through regional health authorities. Besides, the government has increasingly put efforts into promoting collaboration between different stakeholders of the healthcare profession, including community groups, researchers and academic professionals, civil society, and private investors (Pan American Health Organization, 2010). The inter-sectoral collaborations involve healthcare workers partnering with other professionals in promoting violence prevention, nutrition, environmental health, mental health, and HIV/AIDS control and prevention.

Some of the persistent bottlenecks slowing down Jamaica’s efforts to provide sufficient healthcare services are associated with historical gaps in understanding and responding to healthcare workers’ welfare. One of these challenges is the rampant migration of well-trained as well as experienced health professionals like nurses and physicians to developed countries (Tomblin Murphy et al., 2016). Notably, the migration of healthcare workers is not only a Jamaican problem, but it affects all the developing countries in the Caribbean. In 2006, the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) researched this subject and found that approximately 50,000 healthcare professionals had migrated from Caribbean countries to other parts of the world between 1995 and 2005 (Tomblin Murphy et al., 2016). According to the report, the affected countries lost an excess of US$ 2 million of training expenditures in those ten years.

In conclusion, the challenges facing the Jamaican health profession have defied the measures that the government has adopted to improve the health of its citizens. Even increasing its national budget allocation for public health, promoting intersectoral collaboration, expanding training institutions, and abolishing all levies in public healthcare have all not resolved the problem. Therefore, there is a need to research why the country has difficulty marching its healthcare professionals with the demand from its population.

References

Bourne, P. (2010). Public and private health care utilization differences between socioeconomic strata in Jamaica. Patient Related Outcome Measures, 81. https://doi.org/10.2147/prom.s11868

Casey, J. (2019, May 20). Health Care in Jamaica. Jamaicans.com. https://jamaicans.com/health-care-in-jamaica/

Pan American Health Organization. (2010). Jamaica Country Cooperation Strategy 2010 – 2015 November 2010. PAHO/WHO. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/166904/ccs_jam_en.pdf;jsessionid=170CA74B6D398143C252007B8BE71279?sequence=1

Statista. (2020). Health expenditure as share of GDP in Jamaica. https://www.statista.com/statistics/952655/jamaica-health-expenditure-share-gdp/

Tomblin Murphy, G., MacKenzie, A., Waysome, B., Guy-Walker, J., Palmer, R., Elliott Rose, A., Rigby, J., Labonté, R., & Bourgeault, I. L. (2016). A mixed-methods study of health worker migration from Jamaica. Human Resources for Health, 14(S1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-016-0125-8

Trading Economics. (2020). Jamaica Physicians. https://tradingeconomics.com/jamaica/physicians-per-1-000-people-wb-data.html