Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton, has written Wild Flavours a book recounting Jamaica’s efforts made to combat the COVID-19 virus.

Jamaica’s success in getting back on track after two years is one of its best successes since independence in 1962.

Dr Christopher Tufton lead the charge coming before the public every day, imploring Jamaicans to follow safety measures not only for their personal welfare but also for the well-being of others. Here the minister of health’s communication skills proved invaluable and again demonstrated why he continuously enjoys a high favourability rating with the public.

Jamaica had its first COVID-19 case in March 2020, imported from the UK with a woman visiting relatives in Seven Mile, Bull Bay. That same month the WHO declared this virus as a global pandemic. Jamaica had not experienced anything like this in a century. 

Wild Flavours is full of data and is a fantastic chronology of events that is digestible. It answers the question could Jamaica cope with a crisis of this unprecedented magnitude and the efforts made to galvanise the country. 

Dr Tufton recounts: “It was not all doom and gloom. What we did have was a robust surveillance system, as infectious diseases were not new to Jamaica. We had experience in contact tracing, most recently in 2006, when we had a malaria outbreak and some 4,000 people were infected. That system of frontline workers would prove to be invaluable in the COVID-19 response to come.” 

In this new book, Dr Tufton draws lessons learnt from other viruses more particularly Ebola, SARS, HINI influenza, MERS, Zika. The similarity here is pathogens from animals spreading to humans. That was the story of this COVID-19 virus. 

One may wonder why Dr Chris Tufton entitled this book Wild Flavours. Well, wild flavour is the name given to exotic animals, which are considered more nourishing and richer in flavour than farm-grown animals. This is why we had to contend with COVID-19 and is in fact its genesis.

A decision had to be made on banning visitors from China where COVID was said to have originated and other countries. This would have to be carefully considered bearing in mind that Jamaica is highly dependent upon tourism. The minister of health would come under considerable pressure from both private and public sector operatives who feared the devastating impact of insulating the country from this contagion.  For Dr Chris Tufton it must have been like Satan whispering into the ear of Jesus with all manner of entreaties. He would have to be resolute, yet not unyielding and intransigent, a delicate act. 

Dr Tufton, always the effective communicator provided a listening ear, he heard all the accounts of how businesses and livelihoods would be destroyed, how Jamaica could be set backwards in a way that would take decades to recover. He heard them all yet chose to be guided by the science and WHO protocols. Jamaica should be grateful for having an effective minister of health in what was its biggest health, economic, financial and social crisis all at once. 

In Wild Flavours, Dr Tufton surmises: “If an epidemic can be detected early, it makes a difference. Actions taken even a day too late can have massive repercussions. When the disease is unknown — it’s new, and no one knows how it behaves — early action can appear unnecessarily cautious, and there is a risk of blowing the situation out of proportion. While erring on the side of caution may seem the most prudent choice, those errors can be very costly, particularly when the anticipated outcome doesn’t manifest.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects worldwide were unprecedented but the possibility of such a phenomenon was well known. Many may have thought that the idea of an unknown and highly contagious virus spreading worldwide, shutting it down, was the stuff of fiction and movies.

“But public health experts globally, including in Jamaica, however, knew it was not only possible but also inevitable. For years, decades even scientists had declared that a global pandemic was bound to happen.”

Jamaica is not a particularly disciplined society and it has struggled with law and order for many years. Getting Jamaicans to follow regulated and mandatory procedures would be no mean feat. There there is the trust issue.  So many wild theories took hold. This was a man-made solution to reduce populations, the virus was designed to make curb fertility, big pharma had engineered this to maximise profits. Many refused to take the vaccines. Some even looked to their Bible and concluded this was the mark of the beast.  Why must I wear a mask?  It would be an uphill task to win Jamaicans’ trust and convince them that the measures put in place was in the country’s best interests and would keep people safe. An islandwide curfew would be fraught with difficulties. Jamaica would pose challenges other countries simply would not face. 

Then there were resource constraints and the enormous pressure placed on the cash-strapped Ministry of Health already coping with the weight of expectations placed on it before this coronavirus. A daunting task for sure. How do you get Jamaicans to trust the process? How do you dispel all the fake news stoking mistrust? 

“The trust issue was less straightforward but just as important, Jamaica is a low-trust society. Most Jamaicans do not trust each other. Almost all Jamaicans believe corruption is widespread throughout the society, and very few Jamaicans have confidence in their government and the agents of the state.

“But virtually everything that we were going to have to do would require the cooperation of the general population to be effective, and for people to cooperate, they would have to trust in the authorities. From the outset this was clear. The news coming out of China about the disease was scary — so much was unknown about how it was spread, and hypotheses and rumours were rife, writes Dr Tufton.

This is a well-written book, with the author coming over more as an observer than lead principal in managing this crisis. The research here is commendable and anyone looking into both historical and societal insights into this turbulent time would do well to read Wild Flavours. 

With hindsight, one can truly comprehend the magnitude of what Dr Tufton and his team were able to accomplish, which, to be frank, was against the odds. This tome is not laudatory in tone but kudos must be given to a collective effort here.