Minister of Health and Wellness, the Hon. Dr. Michael Darville spoke to concerns about the new hospital to be constructed on New Providence Highway in New Providence.

Darville spoke with members of the media outside of the House Of Assembly on Wednesday about the reaction of residents at a town hall meeting held on Tuesday. He said, “some are for it, some are against it. And so last night the residents had an opportunity to voice their concerns. It is categorized almost in four points noise pollution, whether the hospital will impact the price of their property, speaking about the construction aspect of it and the traffic and the noise associated with EMT vehicles. These are normal questions and reasonable questions by the residents.”

The Minister also addressed concerns about staffing at the new hospital amid current medical professional shortages. “Should we wait until all these shortages are replaced and trained before we look at improving out health care system? The answer to that is no. What we have to do is we have to establish short, medium and long term. I spoke very clearly last night. Coming into office we found deficiencies with nursing. We found deficiencies with allied healthcare workers. They are not assets that are just sitting around, they need to be trained. So we went abroad and we recruited individuals to fill those spaces. While the world is recruiting from us. North American is recruiting our assets. As Minister of Health it is my responsibility to ensure that I keep the system going. And so if that means bringing people from outside to keep it going that’s what I would do.”

The new hospital will be constructed at a cost of approximately $290 million.

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