Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony on Tuesday lambasted the former regime for its poor policies which led to the health sector suffering for five years.
During day two of the debates on the 2023 budget, Dr. Anthony claimed that the APNU+AFC regime made several promises to ensure the transformation of the sector but none were kept.
Dr. Anthony outlined that one of those promises made was the construction of a specialty hospital. This never got off the ground. He also made mention of failed promises to upgrade the laboratory for the Food and Drugs Department.
The Health Minister said, “In 2015, the APNU-AFC made a litany of promises… That is their legacy, a lot of promises but absolutely no delivery. This is incompetence and mismanagement,” Dr. Anthony said. He further claimed that the health sector suffered a major collapse under the previous administration.
Dr. Anthony also accused the previous administration of budgeting funds for the development of the health sector and not delivering. He questioned in this regard, the establishment of several budgeted health facilities including the Pediatric Cardiac Centre.
While Dr. Anthony allotted much of his time to highlighting the poor track record of his predecessor, he did outline the plans of the administration for 2023.
“Our task today is to not only fix the healthcare system the APNU-AFC damaged and left but to transform it into a world-class system… Starting from this month we will see the increase in salaries for nurses, doctors and every clinical person working in the health sector,” Anthony said.
He concluded that in 2023, the administration plans to train an additional 1000 nurses to add to the complement of nurses already in the system. Last year, over 1000 nurses graduated with various diplomas in nursing.
