By Robert Andre Emmanuel
The newly elected President of the Antigua Barbuda Nurses Association (ABNA) said her team will be undergoing a walkthrough of the various healthcare institutions across Antigua as part of their work to champion the cause of nurses.
Laurellyn Williams, who officially took the reins of the association following a handover ceremony on Monday, replaced the immediate past president Soria Dupie-Winston after the ABNA held its elections last week.
During an Observer AM interview yesterday, Williams noted that “too many of our nurses have to fight to survive” and are therefore continuing to migrate outside the country and the region in search of better working conditions and pay.
“The other thing we’ll be looking at is to ensure that the conditions under which our nurses [work] are safe and decent, so we’re talking about the hospital, the clinics, Fiennes Institute, Clarevue, the prison, everywhere nursing is performed,” she said.
She added that “when we signed up to do nursing care to take care of our people, we did not sign up for bad working conditions and bad pay”.
Meanwhile, for the first time since the ABNA was established, a Barbudan nurse has been elected to serve on the new executive.
President Williams remarked that nurse Jenita Cuffy will offer an on-the-ground perspective on the issues facing Barbudan nurses.
“Even though we had some associations with them, it has now reached to the point where we have to take care of them because ABNA is the legal bargaining agent for nurses and the community health aides in Antigua and Barbuda, so we intend to look out for Barbuda,” she said.
She also shared that McBert Arthur is the lone male nurse serving on the ABNA executive.
Meanwhile, the president said that having nurses strategically positioned is vital to making a positive difference in the healthcare system.
“All nurses in the Caribbean [will be] meeting in Guyana this year and the theme is ‘nurses strategically positioned to move healthcare forward’. Give nurses a chance and we will transform what is happening to our healthcare system right now,” she remarked.