And while the ministry still has not identified a director of public health, hospital services, or international relations - the three posts created to replace the DHS - they DO have a new CEO.
Dr Julio Sabido took over yesterday, replacing Dr Lesbia Guerra, who replaced Dr Deysi Mendez. It's the third CEO in a month and in the health sector critics have already expressed their doubts since he's considered a junior member of the MOH team since he hasn't yet acted as the head of any region.
But Bernard said he should still be given a chance and that they would take advice from the technical people who know best.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"Like in everything, you have to give the opportunity to people that you believe will be able to work along with you in the vision that you want to [achieve] and I'm not sure whether we should be able to say whether he's a junior or a senior, he's a medical officer, he has worked in the Ministry of Health for ten years, he knows the roundabouts of the ministry and I feel at the time that options were down, I mean you know that we had CEO Deysi that was working there under the previous minister, Dr Lesbia Guerra was offered the position, I don't know what transpired how that did not work out. And so I have to keep this thing running, I need somebody who is already there, a technical person that knows the ins and outs of the ministry and that is prepared to work with me. And I said I'm going to go with Dr Sabido and we're going to ride this train together and remain focus but one thing I always say and I said this to the CEO that we must also bring respect to the ministry and this is my mantra, we will respect the technical, we will respect the staff that works at the ministry, and likewise we will expect the same. And I think once you build that and you set that base there, you can make a lot of great things happen in this ministry."
"One of things I want to say that while Dr Sabido comes from a technical background in terms of the ministry, his capacity now is one of an administrative role so you have to separate the functions and so we will rely wholly on these senior technical people that will lead, to give us guidance so that we can make the right decisions and that is what is critical."
