Ministry of Health Jamaica
The Ministry of Health Jamaica together with staff and other stakeholders has the mission to promote and safeguard the physical, mental and social welfare and enhance the quality of life of the Jamaican people through sanctioning individuals and communities and guaranteeing access to adequate health care by providing cost-effective preventative, curative, and rehabilitative services given by effectively trained and motivated personnel.
In collaboration with the general population, the Ministry of Health Jamaica seeks to make possible a satisfying, healthy and productive life of the Jamaican people, as well as increased individual responsibility for health. This vision necessitates universal literacy and a better-educated Jamaican population. People need to eat right, practice safe sex, exercise regularly, keep away from smoking, avoid the use of drugs and risk taking actions.
This vision of the Ministry of Health Jamaica calls for well educated, highly motivated people and society that make certain basic sanitation, controls violence and crime, sets standards for food and nutrition, implement discipline on the road and elsewhere, and make available readily accessible facilities for recreation and exercise.
The Ministry of Health Jamaica also aims to offer a client-oriented health service where doctors and other health professionals will listen and completely discuss with their patients feedbacks that concern their level of satisfaction with the service given in order to guide health care improvements. Health professionals will willingly partake in ongoing education and re-accreditation would be compulsory.
The Ministry of Health also promotes a healthy environment through the universal availability of potable water, proper treatment and disposal of solid and human waste, and setting high standards of personal hygiene and food hygiene. The protection of the environment and coastal waters such as the Kingston Harbour is also a part of the promotion for a healthy environment, as well as the need for creating more green open areas, parks, nature reserves, walking tracks, rising tracks, and playing and sporting areas. In addition, focusing on planting more trees and developing landscaping aesthetics and gardens, and cities having significant areas free of vehicles where one can take walks or a trolley on rails, are also a part of this promotion.
The Ministry of Health Jamaica agencies include Child Development Agency, Registrar General’s Department, Health Corporation Limited, National Council on Drug Abuse, National Family Planning Board, Pesticides Control Authority, National Health Fund, and JADEP. Its departments include National Public Health Laboratory, National Blood Transfusion Service, History of Blood Bank, and National Registration Unit.
The Ministry of Health Jamaica also wants to enhance good health at low cost as well as social services to support communities and families. The ministry expects to have more years of healthy, productive life, reduced maternal mortality and child mortality, and enhance quality of life for the Jamaican people.