The South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) is a statutory body of the Ministry of Health. SERHA is one of four Regional Health Authorities formed as a part of the Health Sector reform, by passage of the National Health Services Act in 1997.

 

SERHA is responsible for the delivery of health care services to the residents of St. Catherine, St. Thomas, Kingston and St. Andrew. This represents 47% of the population of Jamaica.

 

Health Care is delivered through a network of nine hospitals and 91 Health Centres. Five of the nine hospitals within the region are also specialist or National Referral Hospitals. Some of these institutions also accept patients referred from other Caribbean islands

 

SERHA employs approximately 8,000 people from a variety of medical and non-medical groups. These include staff directly involved with health care delivery, for example nurses, doctors, technologists, pharmacists, health record administrators, attendants and public health inspectors. There are other staff members who work to ensure that the health care delivery system functions at an optimal level and give support to those charged with the direct delivery of health care. These include among others the Management Information Systems staff, maintenance teams, Human Resource, administrative and accounting staff.

 

SERHA is managed by a team of directors ably led by the Regional Director who reports to a Board, which is appointed by the Minister of Health. The region is funded by allocations from the Ministry of Health.