Adequate maintenance of dialysis machines, which is critical to the safe and cost-effective delivery of renal care, has consistently posed a challenge for the few treatment facilities which serve the growing number of patients at government hospitals island-wide.
Raising Professional Standards among Practitioners
Early Childhood practitioners have moved up the professional ladder, thanks to training being provided by the HEART Trust/NTA, under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the CHASE Fund. The highly-subsidised course, financed by CHASE in the sum of J$105 million since it was introduced in 2004, is supporting the Government’s thrust to restructure and raise standards in the child care and Early Childhood education system.
More than 105 arts students, many of them graduates of the Edna Manley College, have benefitted from tuition scholarships granted by the CHASE Fund during the past decade in a wide variety of fields, including—archiving, art education, dance, fine arts, music, and visual arts. Some of the scholarship recipients included:
The Caenwood Resource Centre and Day Care Centre is one of 11 facilities across the island whose physical plant has been expanded and upgraded with financing from the CHASE Fund, in order to strengthen their support programmes for practitioners in the field and parents.
Performance in many of the island’s basic schools, especially those in remote rural communities, has been hampered by resource constraints. Schools were housed in sub-standard buildings and operated without vital resource materials and learning tools.
CHASE has, over a seven-year period, provided financing support for 46 books covering education, culture and history. Titles include: Bustamante: Notes and Quotes and Anecdotes by Ken Jones; Jamaica at the Wicket, by Arnold Bertram; The Rise and Fall of Falmouth by Carey Robinson; Adult Suffrage and Political Administration in Jamaica: 1944 – 2002 by Professor Trevor Munroeand The Story of Hanover by Marguerite Curtin.
The Bagatelle Basic School in Mocho, Clarendon has been transformed into a model school eight decades after it was established by community stalwart, Granville Anderson. The addition of a classroom block, staff room, kitchen and sick bay and the renovation of the existing structure were accomplished by the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education Fund, (CHASE), at a cost of $15.2 million. The handing over ceremony of the new School, took place on Thursday April 26.
A multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art skills laboratory was officially opened at the University of the West Indies today. The facility was established by the Department of Surgery at the UWI, Mona, in collaboration with the CHASE Fund and the Medical Alumni of North America.
The Selection Committee for the Courtney Walsh Award for Excellence has released the names of four persons short-listed for the Award. They are: Stefanie Taylor who has been playing international and regional cricket since 2008; Nadine Bryan a fourteen-year veteran of the Sunshine Girls; Nigel Davis, a Special Olympian who has emerged as a long distance champion; and Dr. Neil Gardner, a hurdler who represented Jamaica at the Olympics in 1996.