Bar­ba­dos' Min­istry of Health and Well­ness and the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for Project Ser­vices (UN­OPS) have for­mal­ly signed an agree­ment aimed at strength­en­ing and im­prov­ing the is­land’s sole gen­er­al pub­lic hos­pi­tal.

The agree­ment seeks to en­hance the lo­cal health sys­tem, by im­prov­ing ac­cess to qual­i­ty health care for cit­i­zens. It will fa­cil­i­tate the ren­o­va­tion of the waste man­age­ment sys­tem and the morgue at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal (QEH). It will al­so sup­port the hos­pi­tal’s dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion process.

The project, ti­tled ‘Im­ple­men­ta­tion Sup­port for the Strength­en­ing and Im­prove­ment of the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal’, has a bud­get of over US$16.5 mil­lion, fund­ed by a loan from the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank (EIB). It is sched­uled to run for 30 months and is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by No­vem­ber 2026.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion is set to strength­en es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture and re­sources at the QEH, en­hanc­ing its ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide high qual­i­ty health­care ser­vices. The agree­ment will al­low the QEH to im­ple­ment a ro­bust waste man­age­ment sys­tem and un­der­take nec­es­sary re­fur­bish­ments to the morgue’s ven­ti­la­tion in­fra­struc­ture,” Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Health and Well­ness, Wayne Mar­shall, stat­ed.

“In ad­di­tion to these in­fra­struc­ture up­grades, the agree­ment en­ables the pro­cure­ment of ur­gent­ly need­ed med­ical and In­for­ma­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) equip­ment. This equip­ment will en­hance QEH’s clin­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties, im­prov­ing pa­tient out­comes and sup­port­ing health­care pro­fes­sion­als in de­liv­er­ing ad­vanced care. The ac­qui­si­tion of mod­ern ICT tools will con­tribute to strength­en­ing and sup­port­ing the digi­ti­sa­tion process. This part­ner­ship with UN­OPS and these tar­get­ed projects sig­ni­fy a proac­tive ap­proach to health sec­tor re­form in Bar­ba­dos, pri­ori­tis­ing the pub­lic’s well­be­ing and align­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices.”

Unit­ed Na­tions Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor for Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Si­mon Springett, wel­comed the part­ner­ship be­tween the QEH, the EIB and the UN­OPS.

“Im­prov­ing ac­cess to qual­i­ty health care in­fra­struc­ture is im­por­tant to achiev­ing both so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­silience in Bar­ba­dos. This part­ner­ship be­tween the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos, UN­OPS and EIB rep­re­sents an­oth­er tan­gi­ble demon­stra­tion of our deep com­mit­ment to build mean­ing­ful part­ner­ship to achieve the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals by 2030,” he stressed.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Nov 16, CMC –

CMC/ed/2024