Getting all facts about UHWI Committee straight

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Attorney and columnist, Gordon Robinson focused his recent article on the health sector, particularly in the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI). However, he made some serious errors and omissions, which we would like to believe were accidental rather than deliberate.

Factual errors

• UWI has eight not seven members on the UHWI Board (Section 10 of the University Hospital Act), which he references but does not appear to have read.
• To say “UWI has zero financial interest in UHWI” is false. The Act states that as its primary purpose is the establishment of a teaching hospital. Further, the UWI’s medical faculty is wholly dependent on the UHWI to train its students who pay for that training. If that’s not a financial interest what is? 
• He asserts derisively that the committee stipulates that: “GOJ and UWI must now both contribute in human and financial resources to a process of active and effective oversight.” No where in the report is the UWI asked to put up money. 
• It is not true that the UWI’s representatives are not responsible for anything beyond “professional contributions made outside the boardroom”, as he stated.
• It’s wrong to place the committee’s references to prior reports as if they were approving of the suggestions made in those reports when clearly the committee rejected them. 

Omissions and distortions

• He ignored four of the five recommendations completely, passing over manifest evidence that cultural change must come from outside as the institution is incapable of changing itself.
• He ignored or downplayed numerous negative references to the GOJ and the Ministry, in his zeal to argue that the committee scapegoated UWI.
• That ex-officio representatives, in this case, do not have votes like every other member.
• He positions the report of not giving significance to the Auditor General’s report when it highlighted it from the beginning.
• He names the current Board and the current Health Ministry as culpable when the offences and breaches have been ongoing from the 1990s, at least.
• He asserts that GOJ passed the Act therefore it’s totally responsible, ignoring the fact that the Act is an enabling Act for a teaching hospital to be utilised by the UWI for all its members states, and not only the GOJ.

We invite the interested public to read the full report available on the Ministry’s website – www.moh.gov.jm.   

THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND WELLNESS