The old Eldemire Hospital no longer exists - No legal obstacles to renaming CRH

Christopher Thomas, Gleaner Writer

Western Bureau:

Should the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay be renamed the Herbert Eldemire Hospital, there would be no legal implications as the private medical facility which once operated under that name is no longer in existence.

According to Dr Nigel Sosa, who now operates a medical practice in the building that once housed the Herbert Eldemire Hospital, the private hospital folded when Dr Eldemire, who was once Jamaica's minister of health, died in 2010.

"I am now the operator of this facility and it has nothing to do with the old Herbert Eldemire Hospital," Sosa told The Gleaner earlier this week. "We run a general clinic and that's about it.

"As far as I know, there's an executor of the [Eldemire] estate, and the estate is being wrapped up. We just operate a clinic here, and we're waiting for them to wrap it up," said Sosa.

The Eldemire Hospital, which was a landmark in Montego Bay for more than half a century, was built in the mid-1950s and operated by two Eldemire brothers.

"The Eldemire clinic was built in the mid-1950s by our father, Dr Herbert Eldemire, and his brother, Dr Arthur Eldemire," said Dr Denise Eldemire-Shearer, the daughter of the esteemed physician.

Eldemire-Shearer, who operates a medical practice in Kingston, told The Gleaner that Arthur died in Canada last week.

While the hospital officially folded in 2010, Eldemire-Shearer said the operations had actually begun winding down almost a decade before her dad died.

"The hospital was closed sometime in the early 2000s," she said, while noting that she could not recall the exact date.

RENEWED INTEREST

Interest in the old Herbert Eldemire Hospital surfaced recently with the controversy surrounding the possible renaming of the Cornwall Regional Hospital as the Herbert Eldemire Hospital.

One of the arguments advanced was that there was already a medical facility called the Herbert Eldemire Hospital. However, with that facility no longer in existence, it eliminates all legal concerns surrounding the renaming plans.

On account of the swirling controversy surrounding an apparent reluctance by the current St James Parish Council to follow on the recommendation of their pre-decessors to rename the hospital, the Eldemire family issued a statement, saying it no longer wished to have the deceased doctor's name associated with the hospital.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller intimated that she plans to meet with the Eldemire family to discuss the issue.