The coming establishment of a Health Authority within the next six months to manage the delivery of health services is a major step for a small island like Anguilla. It is perhaps a desperate move, but at the same time a well thought out plan, to place the services under a different and more professional and workable system to guarantee better returns in health care and administration. As an up-market tourism destination and at a time when there are greater demands on our social services, we cannot afford to have our medical and health sector in disarray and in some areas perhaps dysfunctional.

It is a matter of commendation that the nursing management and senior nurses initiated the one day Managers Workshop on Wednesday, June 4 towards preparing themselves for the tasks ahead. There can be no Health Authority to seriously tackle the delivery of health care without the nursing professionals. They are the channels of the services to the customers and must of necessity be equipped to do their job efficiently and effectively.

Anyone who visited the workshop could not but be impressed by the passion with which the nurses and those who conducted the sessions went about the business of the day.

Clearly, the nurses are on a mission to make the Health Authority work and to bring much honour and success to their noble profession. One of the things to which much attention should be paid, is the recruitment of highly-trained nursing professionals and other medical and health personnel. There must always be a cadre of dedicated health workers available and much will depend on the conditions of service, remuneration, administrative policies and clout which the Health Authority Board will bring to bear in the new system.

It appears that all the stakeholders, planners and all others who have worked strenuously to give birth to the Health Authority have done their part well. The tasks ahead are great and challenging, one of the biggest of them perhaps being the need to restore and maintain the public’s faith in the delivery of health services. This task is not insurmountable. We just need to get our act together and the Health Authority is seen as a sure way towards that end.

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