PM: Jamaica has money, but lacks expertise to build hospitals

Jamaica’s failure to construct a public hospital in more than four decades has left the Government without the technical expertise needed to deliver major healthcare projects efficiently, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has acknowledged.

In a sweeping assessment of the country’s deteriorating public infrastructure, Holness said the prolonged rehabilitation of Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) exposed a much deeper national problem than delays and cost overruns.

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“The bigger problem, my friends, is that we have not built a hospital in over 40 years,” he said during Friday’s reopening of the Accident and Emergency Department at the Montego Bay, St James-based hospital.