Opposition Spokesperson on Health and Wellness Dr Alfred Dawes has described the government’s decision to mandate the presence of an ambulance at the Sangster International Airport as a “pothole fixing exercise”.

Dawes claimed that the move was in response to public outrage while the Norman Manley International Airport was not considered because there was no negative publicity attached to it.

Transport Minister Daryl Vaz had disclosed this week that he directed that an ambulance be assigned to the Sangster airport in Montego Bay and a doctor be on call there for emergency medical service.

The move came in light of the recent death of an American visitor, Leroy Smith, dying at the airport after falling and hitting his head.

The incident triggered a public outcry, with the Opposition slamming the government for not fixing what it described as a broken health sector.

Now in response to the government’s latest move, the Opposition again went on the offensive.

“The Ministry of Health and Wellness has also finally reacted to the chronic shortage of ambulances at the Cornwall Regional Hospital after ignoring that and other emergency medical services islandwide,” Dawes said in a release on Saturday.

Dawes highlighted what he called the lack of a comprehensive plan to address the widespread issues affecting the health sector and the “hodge-podge approach to fixing hotspots as public outcry dictates”.

He added: “This reactionary approach to bad publicity is seen where islandwide emergency response teams have been gutted and only one of two major airports have been outfitted with an ambulance.”

He recalled that it took a baby dying before the May Pen Hospital received a ventilator and social media coverage before broken elevators were fixed.  Additionally, he said the vector control programmes were defunded after the public demand to ramp up fogging subsided. 

The Opposition said the manner in which the Ministry of Health is addressing the root cause of the problems in the health sector “defies logic”.

“Why mandate an ambulance for one airport over the other unless simply guided by a PR first approach?” questioned Dawes.

The Opposition reiterates it call that nothing short of a comprehensive reform of the health sector is needed.

“Knee-jerk reactions to complaints in single locations is nothing more than a pothole-filling exercise which is significantly less than what is required to improve our health sector,” the Opposition said.