Health Minister, Hon. Rudyard Spencer says his Ministry has been moving towards achieving a general improvement in customer service across its facilities. “We conducted a survey of the status of customer service at our hospitals. We have identified some gaps in terms of the capacity of our service delivery institutions to manage aspects of the customer service operations including the planning and evaluation functions. We will be moving expeditiously to address these weaknesses through a programme of systematic training and coaching,” the Minister said.

Minister Spencer was speaking yesterday afternoon (Thursday, August 13, 2009) at the opening of the Lesma Johnson Waiting Room for patients who visit the Brown’s Town Health Centre in St. Ann to access pre and post natal care. He said the Waiting Room will go a far way in improving the working conditions of the health staff and the general environment in which service is offered to the people of Jamaica and in particular mothers and their babies.

“Jamaica must scale up efforts to address the areas of infant and maternal mortality as we seek to improve our performance in these two Millennium Development Goals. While it will take considerably more than improved accommodations to reduce our mortality rates in these two areas, we want to ensure that mothers do not develop negative health seeking behaviours because of poor accommodation at facilities. The improvement to the physical infrastructure is one small but important step that has been taken to move us closer to providing service in a caring environment,” Minister Spencer pointed out.

The Waiting Room was built with the help of the Member of Parliament for the area, Othneil Lawrence and the Social Development Commission, (SDC).

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Contact: MOH, Public Relations Unit