HEALTH CARE and other workers at Bellevue Hospital in Kingston have appealed to Minister of Health, John Junor, to meet with them, despite assurances that they would not lose their jobs if the Government scales down and eventually closes the mental institution within the next five years.
The workers and their union, the Jamaica Workers' Union (JWU), are demanding that the Minister meet with them within the next three days to outline his plans for the institution.
According to the JWU, the employees at Bellevue made that decision and issued the ultimatum yesterday after a meeting on Monday.
Last week, the Ministry of Health promised that health care workers at the Bellevue Hospital would not lose their jobs.
In a statement last Thursday, the union questioned the fate of the workers and stressed that Bellevue Hospital was vital to the society as it was the only hospital in Jamaica, dedicated solely to the care and treatment of mentally ill people, who could not otherwise afford treatment.
But the Ministry's public relation's manager, Shermaine Robotham-White, said there was already a shortage of such health professionals and that the Government would develop plans to determine what will happen to the different staff, patient and resident populations, now housed at Bellevue.
The population ranges from persons who have been abandoned by relatives at the institution and patients who need minimal supervision to acute and other patients who need constant supervision.
She said that while the Government had not yet decided the exact location where wards for acute psychotic patients would be housed, it has determined that these wards would be placed within a general public hospital setting, in a manner similar to that done at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) and the Cornwall Regional Hospital.
Minister Junor, announced last week that the institution would be phased out as part of the effort to reform the health sector and mental health services through a comprehensive five year strategy plan developed and approved in 2002.
Under this system, the Minister said that psychiatrists and mental health officers would treat patients closer to their homes and communities because these environments are less confining and have been shown to facilitate better health outcomes.
