The Member of Parliament (MP) for St John’s Rural West is pushing for a collaboration between the government and the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus (UWIFIC) to establish a healthcare facility in the community that would provide services for the university and the surrounding village.
Taking into account that the Five Islands Clinic has been closed for some time, MP Richard Lewis said that the collaboration is “definitely a necessity”.
A resident recently posted a video of the clinic on social media — which Lewis also shared on his Facebook page — that showed the compound of the clinic being overrun by shrubbery.
Lewis said there is an urgent need for some form of healthcare facility to be opened in Five Islands, since the clinic’s closure is creating dislocations for vulnerable individuals, particularly the elderly and those who are immobile.
“That was closed shortly after the Antigua Labour Party came to office, just after 2014. It was just closed; I don’t know why. And then at that point, the Honorable Baldwin Spencer was the parliamentary representative; and I know he lobbied, and it was reopened for a short time … but it was for a very short time.
“And then they closed it again. There was never really an intention to have a healthcare facility in the Five Islands Village. What I understand that they said is that the Gray’s Farm Clinic is sufficient to provide healthcare, community health care, for the constituency,” Lewis said.
“And so there was really no will to maintain that facility in Five Islands. And so it was just shuttered and left there, bushes growing on the property. I have lobbied time after time in Parliament, to the Ministry, community members have lobbied, and there is just no will to open the facility.”.
Noting that wherever there is a university village, there is usually a healthcare facility, and that he will continue to agitate for the Five Islands facility to be opened.
“That [clinic] is critical; that is definitely a necessity. We have to have some healthcare facility in Five Islands [and] that is indeed a challenge,” MP Lewis said.
Efforts to get a comment from the Minister of State in the Ministry of Health, Michael Joseph, proved futile.
